


Stage III: Big Sea

by Trinket2018



Series: A Daring Adventure [3]
Category: Criminal Minds (US TV), NCIS, Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: ATA Gene, Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Sentinels & Guides, Canon-Typical Violence, Competent Tony DiNozzo, Crossover, Gen, Mission Fic, Mpreg, Original Character(s), Sentient Atlantis, The Ancients - Freeform, Tony-centric, Whump, spencer-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-31
Updated: 2018-06-01
Packaged: 2019-05-16 09:00:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 63,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14808279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trinket2018/pseuds/Trinket2018
Summary: Dr. Spencer Reid finds his way on Atlantis, negotiating a sentient city, aliens, weird science, weirder people, imminent fatherhood, unsettling dreams, the Wraith, suitors… and common-or-garden bigots. Assholes really are everywhere… fortunately, so are cats. Cats *everywhere*.





	1. Revelations

**Author's Note:**

> RATING: NC-17 for profanity, violence. WARNINGS: Stargate Mission!fic Canon-typical Violence. A version of A/B/O dynamics. Mpreg. Bigotry. DISCLAIMERS: for disclaimers & spoilers see notes for *Stage I: The Good Earth*.   
> Follows immediately after *Stage II: The Crossing*. You really need to read Stages I & II of the series first, or this will make *no* sense at all. The Reid-whumping was done at the beginning of Stage I, so now it’s just mission!fic (canon-typical violence for Stargate universe trouble magnets), male pregnancy & common-or-garden bigots to deal with. Well, maybe not *just*…

Å 

*~ When rats infest the palace, a lame cat is better than the swiftest horse. ~ Chinese proverb*

Å 

The *Daedalus* settled gracefully on the east pier of the Ancient city-ship Atlantis. Normally, the deep space carrier would remain in orbit and use their Asgard beams to deliver passengers and cargo to the city, floating like a snowflake on its Pegasus galaxy ocean home. But a saboteur had disturbed their passage from the Milky Way galaxy by setting off a bomb in the engine room control station, doing considerable damage. As a result, although major systems were repaired, up and running, a lot of minor systems were still off-line. There was a lot of dented and fire-blackened equipment to patch, clean-up of debris and scorch marks, blood on the decks, not to mention a lot of system checks to run, before the carrier could qualify as ‘good as new’. This was best and most safely done dry-docked on Atlantis.

Plus there was still a lot of smoke and the lingering odor of burned crystals and seared electronics permeating the atmosphere, and she needed to be aired out.

So the gangway was lowered, and cargo, passengers and off-duty personnel made orderly lines to disembark. This included a number of cats, skirting around ankles to disappear into the alleyways of the city.

There was a greeting party awaiting them all. 

Lt. Col. Evan Lorne, XO of the Atlantis military contingent, took command of the military reinforcements, replacements and transfers who had been sent along on this run, as well as the newly assigned international security personnel. All three of them, who were cleared to land: one Russian, two Brits. 

Dr. Radek Zelenka took the amazed and wide-eyed sciences staff under his own wing, and hustled them off the windy pier before one of them tripped into the ocean while gawking up at the alien city towers. It had happened before. 

That left the City Administrators, Colonel Samantha Carter and Richard Woolsey, the Military Commander, Colonel John Sheppard, with his faithful shadow, Satedan Specialist Ronon Dex. Teyla Emmagan was also present, an honorary executive staff member, as the representative of the people of the Pegasus galaxy.

Lieutenant General Jack O’Neill took careful note that one member of the flagship Atlantis Reconnaissance team 1 (AR-1), had not made it down to the pier. He wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or bad… Jack was in no hurry to deal with the difficult Chief Science Officer, certainly, and the man always seemed to be busy… but did that indicate some current crisis required his presence? Which would be bad. Or was Rodney just avoiding him? Hopefully it was just that.

Colonel Samantha Carter snapped off a picture-perfect salute to General Jack O’Neill. “Sir. Welcome to Atlantis.”

“Thank you Colonel,” Jack answered, matching his one-time 2IC’s all-business tone and manner. Not even a hint of a smile on either of them.

Yeah, he told himself with an internal sigh, she’s still pissed at me. In retrospect, it had been a very bad idea to begin an affair with her. He had kept his hands off the whole time he lead SG-1: non-frat regs and all. And when he got the stars on his shoulders and retired from the field, she’d been engaged to that Shanahan guy. But when that ended… temptation finally got the best of him. They had never been particularly compatible on a personal level, and he only remembered that after he was hip deep and getting deeper. Although Sam’s infatuation with him might have stood the test of time, her ambition drove her to accept commands that kept them apart a lot of the time. Jack had found himself craving the respites, while Sam… got used to doing things her own way, on her own. Jack had tried to let her down easy… Sam hadn’t been ready to admit defeat, and resented that Jack had given up on making it work. Jack just figured that no amount of bashing this broken thing between them with a hammer was going to ever straighten out the dings.

What did shock him a little was to find Teal’c standing at her side. Really close at her side, with a hand on her shoulder, as if for moral support. The big jaffa had always been good at support of every kind.

Jack’s spirits lifted incredibly at seeing his old friend, and charter member of SG-1 from almost their first SGC mission. Teal’c had been so caught up in helping to lead the Free Jaffa nation the past few years he almost never saw the guy. “Teal’c! Buddy!” He linked arms, then quickly had to step away, as first Daniel, then Vala came running up to hug, slap backs, and laugh out glad greetings. It didn’t take long for Daniel and Vala to hustle Teal’c away for a little catch-up. No doubt the big guy would give his old team-mates a briefing as well that maybe none of them wanted Jack to take part in. That made him feel a little sorry for himself.

Sam waited them out, not quite managing to control her impatience. And that worried Jack. 

“Colonel?”

“Sir. If you will join me and the command staff in the Control Tower conference room…” She was momentarily distracted by another person greeting the new-comers, and dragging one of them away. 

Å 

A voice in his head, warm and female, said, ‘Welcome to Atlantis, Furalin. I am the voice of the city and its interface for those with the Legacy of the Great Ones. I greet you with joy at your return to us.’ 

Spencer stood frozen on the gangway as he felt the embrace of another mind around his own, sending tendrils in and around the corners of his thoughts, as if building bridges there. It felt… it felt like a gentle shower of warm, flower-scented rain. He was only dimly aware of people shoving around him… 

“Probie! On my six.”

Spencer blinked, once, twice, then carefully shut his mouth again. Because he knew the attractive man standing near to greet him. He knew the man from his dreams. And how weird was that, though not entirely unexpected? It was the pregnant zed, with the spirit cat who morphed into a coyote. In legend, Coyote was one of the trickster spirits, so Spencer wasn’t sure if he should trust the wide smile and teasing ways of this person. And he certainly wasn’t sure if he was actually the one being addressed, even though the man in the black Atlantis uniform with the distinct swelling at his belly, was staring straight at him. In fact, he turned to look over his shoulder to be sure. 

Cameron, once more standing all too close, nudged him with an elbow, stifling a laugh. “Yeah, he means you, Sunshine.”

“I’m not a probationary officer. I’ve been an FBI field agent for thirteen years.”

The other zed, obviously NCIS Special Agent Afloat Anthony D. DiNozzo Jr., widened his green eyes and affected a look of amazement. “What,” he said with wide sarcasm, “You’ve been in Pegasus before?”

“Um… no…”

“Well then, you’re a probie in Atlantis. Come on, kid. We need to talk over a few things, and we can’t do it here. By the way, ‘on my six’ means follow me.”

“Well, yes, I do know that. It’s used in the military, most especially sailors and pilots, referring to the face of an analogue clock for determining directions where other landmarks don’t necessarily apply. Twelve o’clock high meaning directly above, twelve o’clock directly ahead, three o’clock to the right, nine to the left, six directly behind or below. It has come to refer to having your partner’s back.”

“Good explanation. Now come on, probie.”

Agent DiNozzo hustled him out of the way of too many rubberneckers, none of them with any obvious reason to be lingering out on the pier, until he ordered them to work in helping unload supplies. Cameron, with a little irreverent two-fingered salute, strode off in another direction to join Daniel and Vala and the big man Spencer assumed was Master Teal’c of Chulak, from the mission reports and pictures he’d reviewed. 

As Agent DiNozzo practically shoved his new partner toward the nearest building, Spencer noted that he nodded briefly to two people among the official welcoming party – a huge feral-looking man in dark dread-locks – Ronon Dex, no doubt - and a stunningly beautiful woman with a serene and commanding manner. That had to be Teyla Emmagan, leader of the Athosians and semi-official ambassador between the peoples of the Milky Way and Pegasus galaxies. DiNozzo’s expression seemed to tell them both, ‘don’t worry, I got this.’

Agent DiNozzo’s stride could be described as energetic, maybe even enthusiastic, as he led Spencer to a closet-like chamber with a map lit at the back. The man touched a portion, Spencer recognized it as the Command Tower, twelfth floor, which was set aside for various military operations and administration offices, and… suddenly, Spencer blinked, and the closet doors opened on an entirely different corridor. Once again, there were people in the black military uniform of the Atlantis Expedition hustling around on their appointed duties, only giving Spencer a cursory once-over, the kind any ‘new kid’ might get, although recognition, and then a confusing barrage of micro-expressions then took over. One younger fellow with a Canadian flag patch and rank insignia Spencer didn’t recognize, actually walked into a wall as he passed them. 

“Nice one, Pearson. Pay attention next time, okay?” Agent DiNozzo offered. “Come on people! You should know the drill by now.”

DiNozzo led him to the end of this corridor, a door that opened automatically, and a suite of rooms that had wide floor-to-ceiling windows on a balcony, and a stunning view of the city. Although, to be honest, Spencer doubted that there could be any views of Atlantis that weren’t absolutely amazing. 

‘Thank you, Furalin,’ said the city in his head, charmed and pleased by his reaction.

Yeah, that was going to take some getting used to. Maybe he was a probie after all. 

‘No, Tony calls you this because he is missing his team-mates back on Earth. He has been lonely.’

Spencer nodded acknowledgement. 

Å 

As they began their procession to the nearest transporter cabinet, Sam flashed him a sidelong look. “So. You had an interesting trip, General.”

Jack scowled. “You could say that. The IOA set us up for that shit. Whether deliberately or not… And they won’t admit it. They’ve got a mole in their ranks, Carter, and we’re gonna keep getting ringers, saboteurs and spies thrown at us until we get it dealt with. I’ve already sicced AJ Chegwidden on them, soon as we got a sub-space comm channel opened to the SGC.”

“And the Davids? You going to keep them on the *Daedalus* until it returns home? Steven’s supposed to be with us for at least a month… it might take that long to make all the necessary repairs.”

“That’s what I *want* to do… but the IOA want them here as their very own spies. I’m not the only one to smell something fishy in the reports we’ve been getting lately, Carter. I want to know what’s going on before I decide if we want the IOA clued in or not. So… you ready to give it to me straight?”

Carter grimaced, but nodded. “As soon as we’re in a secure location. You remember the way to the Conference Room?”

When they arrived in the Control Tower Conference Room, just off the Stargate Command deck, Drs Beckett and Keller were there to meet them, as well as the missing Rodney McKay, seated at the table head, a laptop open in front of him, typing madly away.

“This Reid kid is insane, you know that, right?” McKay began firing with both barrels even before everyone got settled around the table: Carter and Woolsey on one side of McKay, Sheppard on the other, Ronon retreating to the back wall to lean and loom, Teyla politely gesturing a place for Jack, before taking her own. She took no notice of her team-mate’s current rant. “He’s got a mathematical genius for codes, ciphers, calculations, geographic distribution analysis, not to mention statistical analysis… and he’s a god-damned cop! How the hell is that the logical career route for him to take? Even without considering he’s a zed! What the hell was he thinking?”

“Well, since he saved all our butts on the trip out,” Jack observed mildly, “I’m kinda glad he has the expertise he does. He took one look at the bomb and body we had and came up with space pirate hi-jacking. He said we would have got there eventually anyway, even if just on the evidence of finger-printing everyone, but by that time we might already have been jumped by the Lucian Alliance. And in the process, he not only fingered a major smuggling ring running inside our ranks and right under all our noses, but our fake Israeli linguist. I’m thrilled to have him.”

“Well yes, of course, the man is a genius, almost as smart as me, but… a *cop*? What a waste of ability!”

“And again I say, that cop, with over a decade investigative experience, saved all our butts. Next stop for our space pirates was going to be Atlantis. You know that, right? And with Reid’s ATA gene, he can probably run this city as easily as Sheppard, here. The Lucians knew that, thanks to Shelyapin, and would have used that knowledge to their advantage. Or given it a damned good try, anyway.”

Yeah, that caused some winces around the room.

Sheppard said, in a cajoling tone, “Come on, McKay. If you want to talk about Dr. Reid’s career choices, you’re speaking to the wrong people. And everybody in this room knows you too well to bother trying to argue with you. Even General O’Neill isn’t so much arguing as baiting, so… let’s get on to more important matters. Right?”

The undeniably brilliant man with the Canadian flag patch on his blue and grey sciences uniform set his stubborn chin, but his pale face had flushed a bright red, and he nodded curtly, shutting up, but continuing whatever he was doing on his laptop.

Richard Woolsey and Carter exchanged glances, but seemed reluctant to actually begin, and once again, Jack’s patience, already stretched thin, broke. 

“So, we’ve already traded full reports about the sabotage, murders, smuggling and attempted hi-jacking. You’ve got a brig full of people – a Goa’uld, a jaffa, four other assorted Lucian thugs, a fake Russian diplomat who just happened to be an undercover Lucian spy, murderer and saboteur, two smugglers from the *Daedalus* crew, two more who were working the black market on this side, and AJ has already collared their Earth-side contact. And you already know what we suspect about zeds all having super-sized ATA genes. The IOA have all the same information. So that’s all from our side. 

“And I’ll just bet a cookie that the zed-ATA connection is no surprise at all to anybody at this table. So lay it all out for me, gang. What stunning revelations have ya got for us that will turn our entire concept of reality upside down and inside out?”

“Funny you should put it like that,” McKay muttered, then seemed surprised he had spoken aloud. 

Å 

The suite Agent DiNozzo took Spencer to included one entry room with a sofa and chairs arranged for informal gatherings – a waiting area, or for initial questioning and informal meetings, perhaps. There were a series of rooms to either side of this, separated by opaque walls that could slide back (Atlantis helpfully supplied the schematics in his head, which was *way* cool), all with balconies and views, for the more sensitive and private functions. Agent DiNozzo kept these locked, but had already added Spencer as the only other person permitted unrestricted access. There was an evidence/weapons locker, an ‘interview’ room, and, the largest space, Agent DiNozzo’s main office. It was his main office to which he led Spencer now. It had two desks with comfortable-looking chairs and laptops, and a couple of guest seats. The only difference between the two work-spaces, really, was that Agent DiNozzo’s desk held a variety of basic office supplies on top, including a few items that were much more personal… Spencer’s eyes were quickly drawn to the Mighty Mouse stapler.

Spencer looked to check that Bast had kept with him, more habit than necessity, since she had never failed to follow him since she attached herself to his side. Then he looked around the large, bright office, and, sure enough, there was the orange tabby he recognized from his dreams, the disguised Coyote, sunning himself on the balcony. 

DiNozzo followed his gaze and grinned. “Yeah, Luke is a lazy bastard. He spends most of his day out there, unless it’s actually raining. He doesn’t like the wet. Have a seat, Probie. That’s your desk. I’ve already called for Supply to provide you with the basics, stationary, pens, that kinda stuff. And by the way, you can call me Tony. Or Boss. Boss is always acceptable.”

“Yes, Boss,” Spencer agreed easily. The point Agent DiNozzo… Tony had made about him being new to Atlantis had been well observed. Spencer would never qualify as an alpha personality type, of any gender, so he was perfectly comfortable deferring to the older man.

Tony settled behind the main desk, back to the windows, and Spencer took the nearest guest seat. Giving a quick look around the office, as Bast leapt into his lap and settled herself comfortably with a minimum of kneading, Spencer appreciated the features of the space Tony had made his office. Although all of one wall was window and balcony beyond, affording a spectacular view of the city and the sparkling blue ocean, the other three walls (including the one that was also a door back into the reception room) were lined with what Spencer took to be the Ancients’ version of white boards – meaning high-tech monitors able to tie into the city security cameras and the operating system, to display whatever the Agent Afloat wished, or even go transparent, at will. No taping maps, evidence reports, victim or crime scene photos to a board, Spencer realized. Garcia would absolutely love this place. 

One wall was filled with copies of Spencer’s evidence from his *Daedalus* cases. Pictures of the crime scene and the bodies, fingerprints, ID files, some of them not at all accurate, and in the top right corner, the file and ID picture of Ziva David. There were also pictures taken of the Lucian prisoners with tentative identifications scrawled in block letters below, the monitors obviously capable of capturing stylus-written information.

Tony grinned briefly at Spencer’s companion as he leaned back and picked up an odd wooden toy from the desk to toss from hand to hand. “Introduce me to your cougar friend?”

Spencer nodded. Yes, Tony was well aware of Spencer’s dreams. Or whatever they really were. “This is Bast. She just appeared one day while I was still in DC and attached herself.”

Tony nodded. “Yeah. Luke did the same thing, found me in San Francisco just before I was taken to the city for the first time. A bunch of cats smuggled themselves on Atlantis while she was moored off San Francisco harbor, and no one bothered to try and boot them off… because we also developed a bit of a rat infestation while there, too. But zeds and cats? I figure it’s a thing. I was calling him Morris, until I caught him stealing hard-boiled eggs off the cafeteria steam table. So now he’s Luke, named for Paul Newman’s character in Cool Hand Luke, by the way.” The agent shifted seamlessly into what Spencer recognized was a quote from the classic movie. “’What we have he-ah is a failure to com-mun-i-cate’.” His new boss had something of a mercurial nature, because he suddenly shifted moods and conversational tacks again. “So. Dr. Spencer Reid. PhD, PhD, PhD, terminal masters in about a dozen other subjects, expert FBI profiler specializing in geographic profiles, and ardent Dr. Who fan. You’re going to fit in great here, don’t worry about that, although I love it that you’re going to drive McKay bats… all that math talent, and you wasted your time on philosophy? Oh yeah, he’s going to rant about that for ages. But. There’s a few things we have to cover before we go any further.”

Tony scowled a little to himself as he considered how to go on. Spencer waited him out patiently. 

“Okay. There’s no easy way to say this, so I’m just going to go for it. Everybody here knows what happened in Arkansas. And I mean everybody. That probably includes the Genii and the Wraith by now. I know you were probably hoping to get a few days in under the radar before the truth got out, but… not happening. See, this is a remote and isolated base. News from home is like gold, and the standard operating procedure whenever we get a supply ship in, or open the gate for a data burst, is to immediately stream whatever news is recorded to all the city monitors. We’ve never had any reason to censor whatever came in before, and I’m of the opinion that it’s a bad idea to start now, no matter what is coming at us. We had no warning what was on those feeds… 

“I gotta tell you, it just about caused a riot here, and we’re still feeling the ripples. And that isn’t even about you, per se... You okay? You need to stop? Need a drink?”

Spencer realized he was sweating and breathing far too fast. He swallowed heavily. He had hoped news wouldn’t have made it as far as another galaxy… that he would have time to… to what? Hide?

Bast sat up and rubbed her head under his chin, and, slowly, he got himself under control.

Å 

Carter sighed, and said, “I suppose we should begin with the current political situation in Pegasus. 

“First of all, the Wraith. Since returning Atlantis to the Pegasus galaxy, we’ve been trying to get a handle on their movements and activity. They know we’re back, we’re absolutely certain of that, since Agent DiNozzo found that one Wraith-worshipper among us, and they probably know our exact location. But they haven’t made any movements in our direction, none at all, as far as we can tell, and we don’t know why that is. Our best guess is that they’re attempting to put themselves back in stasis cycle, since fewer and fewer hives are being reported out and about, and the number of reported cullings has dropped significantly. They may have done the math, and realized that there simply aren’t enough humans in the various populations in this galaxy to support their numbers, and they’ve been unsuccessful in locating the Milky Way, since we dealt with the super-hives. 

“They may also have discovered that many of the humans they have culled are survivors of the Hoffan plague… and that kills a Wraith who feeds from them, and they apparently have no test to determine who is contaminated with the Hoffan antibodies, and who isn’t. At our last estimate, something like ninety percent of Pegasus human populations have been stricken with the Hoffan plague – Michael’s work. 

“Michael was dedicated to eradicating the Wraith who rejected and cast him out after our experiment on him turned him into a hybrid creature neither side wanted to acknowledge. We believe his plan was to force all the Wraith to chose between death, and allowing him to convert them into hybrids, which don’t require humans to feed. Not that this made him in any way our ally… He was just as dedicated to getting revenge on us as the cause of his fate, but he was thankfully less successful there, before his death. Those of his hybrids who survived have run and hid… they aren’t well organized, and seem to want only to live out their lives in peace, well out of the way of either the Wraith, still dedicated to wiping them out as an abomination, or humans, who are inclined to carry a grudge. 

“In the meantime, Dr. Beckett has come up with serum vaccinations to improve Hoffan plague fatality numbers… it’s now running around eighty percent survivable with treatment, up from fifty percent, and still leaves recovery patients with the necessary anti-bodies. But that’s still one in five fatalities, so we’ve been trying to discourage any new groups from taking it. We’ve made the vaccinations freely available to anyone who asks. 

“We don’t think the current Wraith inactivity means they are running and hiding from us, they’re far too arrogant to fear us, their food source… so, hibernation.”

Jack nodded slowly. “A-and I already know all of this. It’s in the reports. I have no doubt this part of it is complete and accurate. What I want to know is the stuff you’ve been hiding under obfuscation and evasion.”

Yeah, when Sam tightened her mouth and rubbed her temples like that, it was because she was having difficulty restraining herself from yelling at a superior officer for being a complete and utter dick-head.

“We’ve already reported that… cultural differences are making our situation more difficult in acquiring allies here in Pegasus. We just didn’t get too specific on the precise nature of those difficulties. They all like our free hand with medical assistance, for Hoffan plague, Second Childhood, all sorts of other common diseases here, even significantly improving infant mortality numbers, not to mention removing Runner tracking devices. Most, all but a few rogue factions of the Genii, are resigned to the fact that we’re the only ones who can keep Atlantis afloat, that many of us have the ATA gene, the ‘legacy’ of their Ancestors, so they’ve mostly stopped resenting the fact that we’re occupying a city they consider theirs, more than ours. Returning from Earth was a major step towards gaining their trust, that our intentions are to share her benefits with all. And everyone knows we have an open door policy for taking in culling refugees and assisting evacuations. And that sort of good will… is the *only* thing preventing them from coming after us with pitch-forks and flaming torches right now. I’m assuming Dr. Thibideau told you that zeds, they’re called the Veralin here, are revered? By pretty much everyone in Pegasus.”

Teyla said, somewhat stiffly, “They’re considered direct descendants of the Ancestors, and have the ability to detect and operate devices the Ancestors left behind, just as those with the ATA gene do. It was thought this is why the Wraith hunt them wherever they are found. They are our shamans, our elders, sometimes healers. There are rumors of special powers, and they are known to resist Wraith cullings and feedings. How… is not known. So we protect them. They are so very rare… and so very valued… And we protect any population that includes the Veralin among their number.”

“We had them on Sateda,” Ronon suddenly spoke up from his shadowy corner, startling a few of those present. “That’s why the Wraith culled us to extinction. They wanted no Veralin to survive.”

“See,” Sheppard explained, “zeds were something of an open secret here on the city. I mean, Tau’ri know about zeds, about the existence of two-gendered people, of course, but there’d only ever been the two here, and Thibideau was a bit of a mouse, barely made a whisper. It never occurred to anyone to talk about zeds to the Pegasus locals. Why would they? Any more than we reported back about Veralin, people most of us thought were local myths, as we’d never actually met one, and no one ever mentioned they were dual-gendered. Even Teyla and Ronon only knew what zed stuff they picked up from movies and TV from Earth, which are not what you might call proper educational materials, and not in any way a great introduction to the way Earth views zeds. So after Thibideau had his run-in with that ass-hole marine and they suddenly realized what zeds really were…”

“Because of the potentially explosive nature of this news,” Teyla explained, “if it became widely known in Pegasus, and the negative effect it would have on the view of *everyone* here of Earth… we agreed to keep it secret, Ronon and I. With much troubling soul searching and doubt that we were acting for the best, and not simply colluding with the mistreatment of the Veralin.”

Jack frowned around the table. “Are we certain that our zeds are, in fact, Veralin?”

It was Dr. Carson Beckett’s turn to answer. In his soft Scottish brogue he said, “Yes. We’re positive. Teyla was able to introduce me to two Veralin… who obliged me with blood samples. It’s the exact same gene complex, XXZ, XYZ, plus the ATA combinations. In fact, the only difference between Pegasus-native Veralin and Earth zeds is reproductive rate. Veralin have a really low reproductive rate. From what we’ve been told, they can only conceive or produce sperm once a year, if that, and aren’t all that interested in sex beyond that.”

“Well, that certainly sucks for them!” Jack grimaced. “And ours are pretty much 100% fertile all the damn time.”

Yeah, even Jack could see the Atlantis crowd shifting uneasily at that. And not looking at McKay. Now why…

Carter rushed in at this point. “So. The day the news came through about those cases in Arkansas, and what the Sulfur Springs Police did to set up Dr. Reid… We had a trading party of Athosians from the mainland waiting to go through the gate, as well as various other visiting locals, refugees, and those working civilian jobs, all of which is usual here, but we also had a number of delegations of our allies and trading partners visiting. We were trying to set up an alliance for mutual protection and information on the Wraith, a kind of neighbourhood watch. We want to organize evacuations a bit better when necessary, handle the refugees and survivors to lighten the trauma of a culling as much as possible, make getting them relocated and settled a little bit easier.”

Sheppard took the baton then. “News from Earth isn’t just of interest to us on Atlantis. It’s fascinating to the Pegasus locals, too. So when the Sulfur Springs story came up… yeah, that was bad. Suddenly, Pegasus-at-large was made aware that there were Veralin on Earth, and they were being treated like scum. It took Woolsey, Sam, Teyla, Ronon and me hours to get the visitors calmed down enough to explain a few things. They still aren’t happy with us, but we threw Tony at them, and that helped a little… it had escaped their notice that he was Veralin. But at least they agreed to give the Atlantis Expedition the benefit of the doubt.”

Woolsey nodded. “Colonel Carter and I pointed out, rightly, that no society is without blame, we all make mistakes… and the treatment of zeds on Earth is a big one. Luckily, from news reports and commentaries after the attack on Dr. Reid, it’s become clear that the US, at least, is beginning to recognise the error and trying to mend its ways.” Richard rubbed his temples, wincing from the headache that might just be permanently lodged there, “Unfortunately… we have to assume news has spread about zeds in general, and Tony and Dr. Reid in particular. Which means it’s only a matter of time until some Wraith-worshipper catches on, and tells their masters.”

Sheppard said, “And given that the Wraith are dedicated to wiping out zeds… if they weren’t already targeting Atlantis, or if they weren’t already slavering at the mouth to sink their teeth into the eight billion walking steaks on our little home planet… well. This would tip the damn scale.”

Jack nodded, slowly. “Okay. I get that. We’ve got political fall-out. But having Dr. Reid here, himself… won’t that help? Won’t he be, like, a rock-star around here?” As little as the shy young man would care for that, Jack supposed. 

“As long as we keep him on the city… Very likely,” Sam agreed. Odd, then, that she didn’t look any the happier. “For a few weeks, anyway. It won’t be forever, not in a small closed community like this, and people will calm down. We received all of his papers on zeds, and that’s made interesting reading for everyone. The one on zed abuse in the military was made required reading for all our military. Along with warnings that none of it would be tolerated here. The anthropologists are chomping at the bit to talk to him. He also might find, when he’s cleared for the field, that the locals treat him with… a bit more attention than he’s used to, or feels comfortable with.”

Jack nodded. “Okay. So that’s the political situation. We’re on probation with the Pegasus natives over our treatment of their Veralin. I can’t blame you for keeping that from the IOA. Considering some of those assholes, and the number of countries with a less-than stellar history of anti-zed persecutions… including our own, it shames me to say… a lot of them aren’t going to be too sympathetic to the Pegasus point of view. It was pretty damn hard getting them to let me hire Dr. Reid in the first place, simply on the basis of gender… and the concessions I had to make… well, it opened the door for way too many un-vetted persons to get past our screening process. But that’s not what’s got all your panties in a twist, is it? Come on, folks, give it to me straight.”

There was still some shifting and glances between the Atlantis command staff. Oh yeah, Jack was getting a really bad feeling in the pit of his stomach…

“Oh for god’s sake, tell him, will you? Get it over with!” McKay burst out. And he stood from his chair, and out from behind his laptop, to reveal… an extremely swollen belly. “Yes, General, you can get that stunned fish look off your face right now. I’m pregnant!”

Å 

Yeah, okay, Jack acknowledged, the stunned fish remark was justified. 

“Hey now, McKay, take it easy,” Sheppard soothed, pulling the scientist back into his chair. “It’s going to be okay. You’re not alone here.”

McKay slapped viciously at the helping hand. “Don’t you give me that crap, Colonel James Tiberius Kirk! Let’s see how alone I am once my contractions start! *Then* you can tell me how not alone I am in this thing! You… you… impregnator of innocent zeds!”

Jack closed his eyes. Yeah, that was TMI. Not altogether unexpected… rumors had been going around from the beginning that Sheppard’s otherwise inexplicable tolerance for and indulgence of McKay might have a romantic component… Jack just didn’t want to think about it.

Sheppard gave McKay a leer and his right eye-brow bounced a little. “Only one, so far, Rodney.”

The Canadian genius’ eyes narrowed. “And it damned well better stay that way, too, you… you Kirk!” 

Å 

Dr. Beckett took over the briefing from there. To Jack’s relief.

“So, yes, the secret is now out, General. We now know why 90% of Zed positives are single gender, and only 10% are dual-gendered. You’ve probably already guessed it yourself.”

Jack nodded slowly, rubbing his face. “It’s the ATA gene, isn’t it?” Holy hell… of course it was. He had guessed, but… “Shit. This is what you don’t want the IOA to find out.”

“Can you imagine?” Carter asked. “The incidence of permissible abortions of Z-positive fetuses world-wide on Earth is pretty damn high now… If there was a definitive test that would identify zeds before birth? There are countries that might even make it law, demanding abortions of zeds. Our own country might even be one of them, General. How can we possibly allow that? And I say this, realising full well that the news is bound to get out, sooner than any of us like… and that’s without the bomb-shell of what happens to a Z-positive carrier who gets the ATA gene therapy.”

Jack felt physically ill. “Holy hell… okay, fill in the blanks here.”

Beckett defended himself nervously, or rather, the clone Beckett defended his original… Jack was foggy on how that worked in the doctor’s mind. “No one even knew about the ATA before you and Colonel Sheppard, both of you are Zed-negative, it’s sole function *seemed* to be in the interface with Ancient technology, which is in itself rare enough on Earth… so there was no way for anyone to realise how it might relate to the Zed chromosome.”

Jack nodded. “And because Landry is such a bigoted shit-head about zeds, he even resisted letting circles into the programme, although he was less successful there.”

Beckett continued, “I, or rather, my original, developed the ATA gene therapy because we were so desperately in need of more people who could access Atlantis systems, or even fly the Puddle jumpers… we gave ATA mouse gene therapy to all and sundry… we had no way to know there might be… unintended side-effects. It only ‘takes’ in a little over 10% of subjects, they have to have at least latent inactive receptors to be activated, and the mouse gene is never as strong as a natural ATA. But of those ten percent, half are…”

“Z positive carriers.”

“All Zed positives given the mouse gene get a fully active ATA, although the strength varies widely, dependent upon other elements in the genome, so far unidentified. The basic receptors are actually a part of every Zed chromosome. Some Zed negatives also have receptors elsewhere, a slightly different gene cluster on the twenty-second chromosome pair, but there aren’t too many of those, something less than oh-point-five percent.

“Some months after we began giving the therapy, a few people started complaining of unusual symptoms. At first, we didn’t realise what it was, diagnosed as fluctuating hormonal levels and the accompanying emotional shifts. We assumed it was some kind of flu they had picked up on Atlantis or from some other Pegasus source, maybe even an extremely subtle device on the city that had activated that we hadn’t located yet. It seemed to even out after a while, although their hormone production seemed to shift and stay shifted. People just… adjusted to it. 

“Then, about a year after the first subjects were given the therapy, one of the scientists, a female Zed positive carrier, started developing a penis. A perfectly functional penis. We managed to keep it quiet. She wasn’t seeing anyone, wasn’t on the field team roster, didn’t need to use the communal showers… it took about another year for her to fully manifest as a zed, complete with testes, and when they dropped, she got the zed signature mottling too. I… I didn’t report it. Patient confidentiality… it was no one’s business but hers. She’s from a country where the laws are even more punitive than for the Americans. She was absolutely horrified by the possibility she might be branded, and black listed, subject to zed discrimination for the remainder of her life. I still had no bloody idea what had caused it… until more cases began to be reported to me. By the time we realised what was happening, it was too late. Zed positive carriers had already taken the ATA therapy, years ago… it was too late to stop the process of their becoming dual-gendered, even if we had any clue how to do that. 

“You have to understand… this never happens. Never. Spontaneous development of the zed phenotype? Apart from myths and fairy tales… there has never, ever, been a reported case of a single gendered adult developing zed dual genitalia! I halted all ATA therapy at once, of course. You probably got that report… I can’t even remember what bogus excuse I came up with… I was amazed no one called me on it. And I… I finally reported the situation to Elizabeth… We agreed not to report it. Neither of us wanted Landry to know.”

Okay, that had Jack flummoxed. 

“The first cases, all within the first two years, were all XXZed subjects. Female identified. Even with a penis, testes and the hormonal shift, they were female identified. But my guess is… it doesn’t take as long to manifest male genitalia, the physical changes are pretty obvious and, apparently simple. But for XYZed subjects to develop female genitals… the morphology is far more complex, takes a lot longer to complete, and because they’re internal, the transformation process is far less noticeable. Until their first menstruation.”

McKay went pale. “I thought I was dying. The cramping, and there was all this blood…”

“And with their first period comes the tell-tale mottling. The other XYZeds are taking a little longer, but they’re all transforming too. We think the speed has to do with how strong their ATA is. There’s only one of the Zed positives with an ATA who doesn’t seem to be changing, and she’s got the weakest ATA of all the subjects, barely strong enough to open doors around here. At this point, I’m speculating that there may be a few analogous cases on Earth… Zed positive single gender with very weak or inactive ATA genes. Anyone with a stronger ATA will be born dual-gendered.”

Jack sighed. “Yeah. Okay. So confirmation of our suspicions about the zed-ATA connection is all well and good… makes it easy for us to locate more people to operate the Ancient toys. And before anyone else gets the mouse gene therapy, they need to be *fully* informed of the side effects, obviously, which might make it next to impossible to get anyone to agree to it in future.” Then he looked at Dr. Beckett. “Wait a minute. You’ve got the super-ATA. You’re Z-negative, like me, Sheppard and Major Lorne?”

Beckett swallowed heavily. “Not exactly… I was… my original was Zed-positive, and single-gendered. But there was always something… off. I think that’s why I… he, was so awkward and uneasy in using his ATA gene. My testing indicated that my original had two copies of the ATA – one on the Zed and one on the twenty-second chromosome pair. That seems to be an incredibly rare combination, and I have speculated it sets up a kind of… genetic dissonance or interference. When Michael cloned me… I came out fully dual-gendered. I thought it was something in the cloning process, a mistake, or maybe something Michael had tweaked… but suddenly, I have dual genders and no problems using Ancient tech, and that second copy of the ATA on the twenty-second pair is a latent receptor, not the full ATA. What I assumed was a mistake, aberration, anomaly, not worth mentioning to anyone… well, it was a correction of a flaw in my original’s genome. I was always meant to be zed.”

Jack eyed him. And really, the quick check of the man’s middle, looking for a tell-tale bulge, was *sooo* rude, Jack was glad Daniel wasn’t around to give him an elbow in the ribs for it. “You okay with it, doctor?”

Beckett gave him a sardonic smile, having noted his glance. “I haven’t got a lot of choice. Yes, I’m okay with it. No, I’m not pregnant. We’ve already got three pregnant zeds on the city as of now… all male identified, which is causing our female-identified zeds no end of amusement… the universal male blind spot about taking ‘precautions’, coming to bite them in the ass.”

“So glad I can be of entertainment value,” grumbled McKay, rubbing his tummy.

“Yeah well, at least in Reid’s case, not his fault,” Jack reminded them, which soured the joke, just as he hoped it would. He thought around the corners of this thing... yeah, this needed significant spinning to prevent a mass slaughter of innocents back home... then something else occurred to him. “Wait a second. Danny is a circle. He said the ATA gene therapy didn’t work on him.”

Sam Carter shook her head. “No, he said it wouldn’t have the intended effect on him. Daniel was offered the gene therapy, and turned it down. Didn’t he tell you, sir?” 

A raised eyebrow prompted Jack to scowl. “No, he did not.” Now, why hadn’t his best bud told him about this? “What does Daniel know that the rest of us don’t?” Just hearing that come out of his mouth made Jack face palm, and before anyone could reply, he rushed to say, “Okay, bad example, long list, I know. He obviously wasn’t thinking he’d spontaneously grow a womb, so... what did he think would happen to him?”

Carter gave him one of those ‘I *know* you’re smarter than that, sir’ looks she had honed over the years. “He’s been Ascended, at least twice, and both times he returned he was severely mind-wiped to prevent him remembering something he shouldn’t. He was possessed by the Alteran Merlin, and turned into a Prior. Any or all of those events would have altered his DNA. After the second time the Trust tried to grab him for experimentation after his first Ascension, Janet had all of his biological samples pre-Ascension destroyed, with General Hammond’s complete authorization. We thought there was a greater risk of the wrong people getting hold of them for nefarious purposes, than that we would need to track his changes. He was back, whole and well, his mortal memories returning naturally, through no action of ours. But... he felt that getting the ATA therapy was just too much of a risk. It could turn on any or all of those previous transformations, and he just didn’t want to chance it.”

Jack shuddered, remembering what Daniel looked like with the milky eyes, dead-white skin and scarification of a Prior... “Yeah, no, I see what you mean.” He shook himself to get back on track. Daniel’s ATA angst was something he would have to talk over with the archeologist himself, later. “So… is that it for the upside-down, inside-out reality skewing?”

Sam glanced around the table and nodded. “That’s it for our side. Yours, sir?”

“Yeah, we’ve got another, but related, issue to consider. More like inevitable implications.

“I know we’ve had a Lucian Alliance spy on the city already, and no telling what he might have told his masters. He at least must have discovered that a lot of the Ancient tech is controlled by an ATA gene, can’t be turned on without it, and only the very rare Tau’ri have it. But our buddy Shelyapin was in communication with his superiors, had a Goa’uld vo’cume stashed on the *Daedalus*. And as part of the Russian delegation to Atlantis, he got the complete briefing on the ATA gene, in relation to activating and operating all the biggest and best toys… including the Ancient Weapons Chair on Earth, and Atlantis herself. He was also told, along with everyone else, that we now suspect all zeds have the ATA. And part of the Lucian plan for taking *Daedalus*, was to make sure Dr. Reid remained alive and well. Because they would need him under their thumb to run the city, when they invaded to take her.”

Jack waited out the gasps of surprise and the sudden eruption of Satedan swear-words from the looming barbarian in dreadlocks. 

“Oh yeah. The Lucian Alliance now knows they need ATA gene carriers to run any toys they plan to steal, or have already scavenged. And since they seem to be free to run around our little blue planet to their rotten heart’s content, they can easily grab any loose zeds we may have lying around, struggling to keep a low profile and just get through their fucking lives, and have been so helpfully branded so they’re that much easier to identify.”

Å


	2. Amplification

Å 

“Any questions so far?” Tony asked. 

The briefing on zeds in Pegasus, the ATA connection, and the inadvertent broadcast of ZNN coverage of the Arkansas cases, had all gone quickly. Spencer digested it all easily enough. None of it was exactly unexpected, although he had hoped the full extent of the Sulfur Springs event had not made it to another galaxy… 

“Dr. Thibideau did say he had a problem with the… attention he received from the Pegasus natives he met, so that isn’t a surprise to me. But… Veralin? Not… Furalin?”

Tony nodded, as if expecting this. “From what I’ve been told, Veralin is a linguistic shift. You get those after ten thousand years and more. Yeah, we’re Furalin. Z positive, dual genders, ATA gene, weird dreams, cats following us around. Far as I can tell, there’s only one difference – Pegasus Veralin go into heat just once a year. Think of it as Pon Farr, and they’re sort of asexual the rest of the time. But us? Yeah, never, ever, have sex without a condom. Not to mention a handful more of us spontaneously emerging after getting the ATA mouse gene. Some of them are still in shock. Like poor McKay.”

Spencer blinked. “Dr. Rodney McKay, the CSO?”

“Yeah. I can tell you his gender status because the poor bastard has pretty much outed himself.” Tony gave his big belly a reassuring and fond pat. “As soon as the doctors realised what was going on with him, he freaked. His fiancé, that’s Dr. Jennifer Keller, our chief medical officer, managed to get him calmed down some… then gave him back his ring.”

“Ouch,” Spencer winced. 

“No kidding. He didn’t handle it well, not any of it. No one blamed him. Happened after we left Earth, on our way back to Pegasus. He’s still a tad bitter. Won’t speak to her or look at her, refuses to have her anywhere near him – Doc Carson is now his MD. And then, of course, he had to go and rebound with the person he was closest to, the one we all thought he should have been with from the beginning, even if he was a guy and military… and promptly got himself pregnant.”

Spencer sighed, having seen similar situations all too often. Well, not the spontaneous gender change... He could only imagine how upsetting that would be.

“So… Zeds with ATA genes, Z positive single genders spontaneously becoming zed with the application of an artificial ATA gene…” Spencer’s mind whirled with the new information. It should have shocked him… but it was as if, on some level, he already knew. “And I take it everyone with a strong expression of the ATA gene who is single gendered, and staying that way, is also Z negative?” 

“You got it. O’Neill, Sheppard, Evan Lorne. Those few who know about this are keeping it quiet, treating it like *extremely* confidential medical information. Keller and Beckett have been *very* careful who gets the ATA therapy. I think Sam is briefing O’Neill right now… no idea what they’ll do with the information. This could drop like a tactical nuclear device if it reaches Earth. Well, you’ve literally written the book on all the horrific ways anti-zed sentiment can result in punitive laws, people rushing to get pre-natal tests and then quick and dirty abortions. If they knew there was a guaranteed test for all zed fetuses? Yeah. No. There’d never be another one of us born. Of course, Sam thinks this is proof of what the locals believe, that zeds are direct descendants of the Alterans, that they were zed themselves.”

Spencer frowned. “Well, I suppose it’s possible, but if there are those who have the ATA but not the Z chromosome… we’re not, are we? There’s something else…” Spencer worked at it, and Tony, with a sly smile, waited for the penny to drop. “Furalin. I read a report about the Four Great Races in the Alliance that once ruled the Milky Way, and Daniel briefed us... The Ancients, the Asgard, the Nox, and the Furlings. The Ancients, or Alterans, died, Ascended or came to Pegasus as the Lanteans, until they were forced back home to Earth by the Wraith to interbreed with us. The Asgard home base was the Ida galaxy, and they died out very recently, their cloning no longer viable for keeping them alive, and they left their legacy to Earth, the potential Fifth Race. The Nox are dedicated pacifists, not really interested in the universe beyond their own home planet and almost never leave it. And then there’s the Furlings, about whom almost nothing is known. Furling… Furalin?”

Tony smiled enigmatically. “Intriguing, isn’t it? So little information about an advanced race. And it just occurs to me… when the Alterans left Earth in their flying city ship, Atlantis, to escape their plague… why did they come here, to Pegasus? Maybe they were… invited? By an ally who offered to help them get set up again after leaving everything behind?”

“But we’re not Furling, either. At best, we’re a hybrid.”

“Yeah. That might be the difference between having purple splotches just on our groin, and having it all over our bodies. And a chromosome pair that reads ZZ, maybe?”

“You haven’t told anyone about… about the zed mottled man?”

“Hell no! None of their business. Bad enough that we now have proof that we zeds are effectively aliens. How is that going to go over any better back home than being mutant genetic mistakes? And what, exactly, do we tell them? Blue jungle dreams? Sprit animals? Cats? That’d get us locked up in a padded room, don’t you think?”

Spencer nodded slowly. “No need to volunteer for a psych eval. I absolutely agree there. I have a friend… I’ll show you his papers… he says we zeds are all exceptional, in a variety of ways, different for each of us, but that we’ve been conditioned to deny it. Some of us aren’t ready for the truth about us, to embrace our abilities and power. Not until we’ve been to the blue jungle, and have acknowledged the interest of cats.”

Tony nodded in agreement. “Good one. We should make it a rule. Rule one. The first rule of the blue jungle is not to talk about the blue jungle.”

Spencer smiled wryly at the Fight Club reference. “Not number one. One is the Golden Rule, ‘do onto others as you would have them do onto you’. Then come the SGC rules. ‘Protect the geeks’, ‘protect the planet’, ‘never leave a man behind’. I’m not sure of the order, there... I guess this could be five, ‘a zed has to be ready to hear the truth, have been to the blue jungle and welcomed their cat’.” When DiNozzo chuckled at him, Spencer asked, “Has McKay? Welcomed his cat?”

“Hard to tell. I haven’t seen him in the glade… and I have seen you. As far as I can tell, he hasn’t had any… dreams yet, but he’s a cat person, there’s about a dozen in his room and labs at any one time, and every planet his team has visited, cats have been swarming around him. So have kids, weirdly, because he doesn’t like kids at all. I can kinda relate to that... They scare me green, too.”

“Really?” Spencer could almost feel his ears perk at that. “Me too. At least, they used to. My team called it the ‘Reid Effect’... kids and animals, mostly dogs, reacted badly to me.”

It was Tony’s turn to perk up. “Really? Hunh. Funny it’s the three of us... all pregnant zeds... well, I guess we have a little time to get over it...”

“It is very possible. I’m a lot better these days... My team-mate JJ made me godfather to her two boys. Ever since, I get along fine with most kids I meet. Henry and Michael, Jack Hotchner, some kids I’ve met on cases... I find magic tricks help a lot.”

Tony grinned. “I like it. Well, as far as McKay goes... Kids absolutely adore him, no matter how mean he is to them. One kid told me it was because no one ever has to wonder where they stand with him. He tells them the truth, straight out, and never even attempts to talk down to them. And I guess I can see that… 

“Anyway. One of our new zeds, Major Anne Teldy... She’s out, unlike some of the others, so I can tell you this. She was lesbian before the ATA therapy, already telling anyone who tried to hassle her that they could go take a flying leap, and she’s so hardcore badass, she made it stick. She and her partner are overjoyed to now have… options. I think that’s driving most of the alpha XYs around here absolutely bug-fuck. Oh, and Anne has a cat, too. Well, I call them cats… according to the xeno-zoologists the local Pegasus breeds are all feral varieties, not domesticated house cats. Anne’s is more like a lynx, and the thing is seriously badass in a fight, like her zed.” When Bast lifted one eyelid and made a low-level growling noise, Tony grinned at her. “No disrespect intended, your highness. I’m sure you’re pretty badass yourself.”

“Hmm.” Spencer mulled this over. “There’s more. I’m sure there’s more, about us and the Furlings. But… I can’t quite see it yet. Maybe it’s something else we need to be ready for, or the zed-man needs to tell us. And it would be nice to have confirmation of some of this… Nothing in the Atlantis database about the Veralin? Or Furalin, Furlings? She hasn’t told you?”

“Nope. She’s pretty closed-mouthed about all of it. Maybe she’s got her own Fight Club rule, or Prime Directive, some kind of programming thing. But I do get the distinct impression that she likes having us here. That it gives her… hope.”

Å 

Spencer pointed to the window on the main evidence board, showing Ziva David’s face. “You got the message about Ms. David and her father? I think they’re keeping them on the *Daedalus* until they figure out what to do with them.”

Tony glanced at the picture, his face going tight and blank. “Oh yeah. You, the General, Sheppard, Sam… pretty much everyone warned me.”

Spencer studied him. The man had some outstanding masks for hiding his emotions, but Spencer was able to feel the coiling of a complex stew of anger, bewilderment, regret… the NCIS agent had worked with the ex-Mossad officer for five years or more, faced life and death situations daily, partnered her, watched her back, risked his life for her… and never quite trusted her. It was a difficult and complicated relationship, obviously, all bound up in a multitude of other issues. 

“She… didn’t make any friends while she was aboard the *Daedalus*. I got the impression she felt superior to everyone. She hated and resented me on the basis of my gender status alone, and it felt personal, even though she had never met me. That made her enough enemies with the SGC leadership, but then she made a romantic play for Dr. Jackson, and that was not going to recommend her to Vala or the General… Her own team-mates feared and avoided her, almost no one warmed to her… and Bast absolutely despises her. Her arrogance did the rest. The *only* person she showed any respect for was her father. It made her ridiculously easy to profile and manipulate. In fact, I don’t see how she ever made it in Mossad.”

Tony nodded slowly, still fiddling with the wooden puzzle toy in his hands. “Probably Daddy’s influence. Although I think she’s been getting worse over the years… she’s been pretty badly traumatized over one thing or another… Lost her mother, sister and even her half-brother to terrorism… other people she’s been close to have fallen in the fight…” and Tony squirmed uncomfortably at that. There was a story there… but Spencer wouldn’t pry. “She was captured on a Mossad mission to track down a terrorist training camp. Spent months being tortured. Her father just… left her there. We were the ones to hunt her down and get her out… but I’m not sure how much of her was left by then to save. She does respect one other person, though, besides Daddy David. NCIS Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs.”

“Yeah. I got that impression.” This had wandered into uncomfortably personal territory, Spencer felt, and he shifted, petting Bast to calm himself. And changed tacks. “Do you have a plan for dealing with her? Because I think, from what I’ve heard, that the IOA is going to pull rank on the General and insist she and her father remain on Atlantis.”

“Ouch. And this city ain’t big enough for the two of us.” He eyed the BAU profiler. “What would you suggest there, probie?”

Spencer considered this. “If it were me… I think I would at least attempt to negotiate a truce, setting very clear boundaries. You take care of your business, she takes care of hers, you both keep it polite and professional in public, have no interactions whatsoever in private, and stay out of each other’s way. And I believe it would be prudent to have Atlantis monitor her whereabouts at all times… to warn you if she comes too close. I have no idea what role she’ll take on, but she’s supposed to be security for her father. As he isn’t really a linguist, I doubt he’ll be included in any away missions… He isn’t much trusted by anyone.”

“No… I don’t imagine he is. Let me think about it… I think I like it. But I want to know what they have in mind for her role here, if she stays. She sure as hell isn’t going to be back-up, for anyone but her father, or involved in any of our cases. That’s my line in the sand.”

“Oh!” Spencer suddenly remembered. “I have something for you. I talked to Special Agent in Charge Tobias Fornell a few times before I came out. I wanted some idea about my new boss,” and Spencer grinned at Tony, who had taken on a surprised grin of his own. “He gave me a package for you. Ten recently released movies, and a personal message on a DVD disc.”

Spencer pulled the package, wrapped in brown paper, from his ever-present message bag, and handed it over. “I promised I wouldn’t view the personal disc. SAC Fornell said there wasn’t anything in it his grandmother couldn’t see.”

Tony laughed. “That sounds like Toby, all right. Okay. I’ll watch it later. Thanks, Spencer. A friendly voice from home… I haven’t had any of those in six months. This means a lot.”

There was a chime sound, Tony cocked his head to one side as if listening, then nodded. He tapped a single button on his laptop, the evidence board walls all turned blank and opaque, and the door to the reception room slid open. “Come on in,” he called to the young marine at the suite door. The marine held a box marked with Spencer’s name and labelled ‘office’. Tony pointed to the empty second desk. “Set it down there. Obviously, that’s where you’ll be working, Probie. Thanks, marine.”

The marine nodded, gave the two zeds a furtive, what he probably thought was a hidden, once-over, then left. Tony and Spencer traded smiles. Yeah, no, they were both too good as investigators to have missed the illicit interest.

Another button on the laptop, and the door slid closed, and the evidence boards were back. 

“Okay. So that’s it for my list of high-priority subjects to lay on you. The next item on the briefing agenda isn’t high-priority, but it is a tad personal. I’m not in the habit of airing my extremely personal dirty laundry with subordinates, or team-members, no matter what anybody tries to tell you, but in this case, I want you to hear it from me, and not whatever garbled and highly prejudicial version is probably making the rounds on the Atlantis grape vine. Or from Ziva. Yes, I’m preggers. Due in about another two months—“

“Boss, you don’t have to say anything. It’s not my business.”

“Maybe not, but we’re investigators, which means curiosity is as much in our blood as it is in our familiars there.” He pointed his chin out to the cat on the balcony. “I know the word out there is that I got myself pregnant with Specialist Ronon Dex the second I arrived, as a ploy to get him to protect me. And yes, we did have ourselves a brief and torrid romance. I was bitter and rebounding myself. But the baby isn’t his, and he knows it. And we have both moved on since, agreeing we aren’t compatible enough for long term. But there’s no big mystery about who my baby’s father really is… not as far as I’m concerned, anyway.

“It happened while I was still back in DC. I was having a very bad day, after a very bad week, in which I learned that I would never be able to trust either of my partners in the field again, ever. What to do about the situation… I had no idea. In a moment of weakness, I went to my boss, Leroy Jethro Gibbs, second ‘B’ for bastard and functional mute, looking for advice, hopefully some form of support, maybe even to clear the air about one or two things… I confess, I’ve had a crush on him for years. We had a one-night stand a few years ago… and he’s treated me like a damn leper ever since. I took the hint, and backed off. Until that night, when I decided I was so severely screwed no matter what I decided to do, I might just as well blow up every bridge in sight. 

“He offered his consolation of choice out of a bourbon bottle, and… I’m a little hazy on the rest of the evening, but he kicked me out as fast as he could next morning. No advice, certainly no support, and I took it as a hint, again. So I went to the NCIS Director, Leon Vance, to lodge an official complaint against my partners, both of them… I was on an undercover assignment, hunting for a home-grown terrorist suspect in a triple murder, they were *supposed* to be my back-up, running reconnaissance... but they cut comms.” 

Spencer gasped, in horror. There had been rumors, but… who would *do* that? It was a law enforcement officer’s, and a zed’s, worst nightmare. 

“They said they were bored, listening to my drivel. Then they claimed it was a joke… to this day I’m not clear if they meant they didn’t cut comms after all just said they did, or they really did and that was the joke. Either way, it was just payback for office pranks I had pulled. Yeah, no. The worst I ever did was paint their keyboards with crazy glue, and never outside the office. Never on an active op. Never when I was back-up. Never, ever, in the field.”

Spencer nodded, willingly enough. He remembered prank wars with his team-mate Derek Morgan… none of the others were dumb enough to take him on… sometimes such indulgences were a requirement for sanity in the face of the stress and ugliness of the crimes they dealt with. And even Hotch encouraged a lighter joking atmosphere around the office whenever possible. 

“I don’t *think* they were deliberately trying to get me killed out there… but I’ve been wrong before. 

“Vance refused to reprimand *them*, agreeing I was just getting what I deserved for unprofessional behavior on the job, but decided *I* should get a proper Z brand and go Agent Afloat on a destroyer… not a good plan for a zed. And Gibbs is acting all weird later that day… instead of supporting me, fighting to keep me from a messy death at sea at the hands of a thousand hostile and bigoted XY Alpha Males, he accuses me of betraying him by fucking one of my team-mates, and yeah, that would be the duplicitous Miss Ziva David, who told him a pack of out-and-out lies. He calls me all the vile names he can think of, and an ex-marine has a lot of things to call a zed. So my options dwindle rapidly to nothing, I stew about it another day, and in a fit of pique, I storm into Vance’s office, prepared to make a stink and damn the torpedoes… but a previous Director is there, Tom Morrow, now with Homeland. He sees the state I’m in, grabs me, hauls me right out of the Navy Yard with all possible speed, and... 

“I think I was railroaded. In the nicest possible way. Morrow took me to ex-Navy JAG AJ Chegwidden, now another assistant director at Homeland, I’ve worked a lot of cases for him over the years… they had me sign a stack of NDAs tall as a house, start telling me about stargates and flying cities and… next thing I know, I’m on Atlantis, a floating alien city under an invisibility dome, just outside the Golden Gate Bridge, and she’s all happy to see me. I think I must have agreed to something at some point, but honestly, I‘m a little foggy on exactly what or when. And then I notice my mottling is getting bigger… and the last, the very last person I want to ever see again is the baby daddy, Leroy Jethro Gibbs. Well… apart from team-mates Ziva and Timmy McGee, Director Vance, ex-Mossad Director Eli David… I almost expect Gibbs, McGoo and Vance to troop in here at any moment.

“So that’s my story. Now, I’m also going to explain how I managed to pass as male all this time, and hope you don’t resent the hell out of me for it…”

“Honestly. Boss. There’s no need. Really.”

“Oh come on, Probie. You gotta be at least a little cheesed off that I managed somehow, by means less than strictly legal, to avoid being branded.”

Spencer frowned, thinking about that. “No… I don’t think I feel any resentment. I’m glad you were lucky enough to escape all that. I’m always glad to find someone has managed to buck a plainly unjust system. I think you’d be surprised how many of us have managed it, to go into military service or law enforcement. I’m aware of at least half a dozen methods for obscuring or removing the brand mark, or avoid getting it in the first place, not to mention more than a dozen ways to beat the blood tests.”

“Really?” Tony asked, clearly intrigued. 

“Really. There is an… underground, I guess you would call it. There are dozens of clinics in border towns in Canada devoted to helping zeds cover or erase their brands, willing to fake clean blood tests for marriage licenses, job applications, or birth certificates. I know a number of people who have used their services in order to apply for otherwise forbidden professions.”

Tony’s eyes narrowed. “You’re talking about Sentinels, aren’t you?”

Spencer nodded, not surprised that someone who had worked in law enforcement for so long, and with the military as well, would have heard rumors of the semi-mythic legends, as he had himself. “Some of them, I have no doubt. The others are just zeds with a strong sense of duty. Or adrenaline junkies with a death-wish, maybe…”

“Po-tay-to, Po-tah-to. We got them here, you know. Sentinels in Pegasus. They’re called Protectors. Pretty much every planet we go to, even the more populated or industrialized ones, they have adult initiation rites for all their kids, send them into the wilderness alone for a time. To hunt and survive on their own. That seems to be part of the trigger that turns on a Sentinel. And it does seem to run in family lines. Now, I don’t know how many of the Expedition realise what Protectors really are, if anyone... I think most everyone just assumes it’s a fancy title for a security head. I haven’t disabused them of that idea. Like you said, no need to volunteer for a psych eval. And let’s just call that rule six.”

Spencer thought about it. “A genetic advantage for the tribe… in this case, hearing the stargate open or darts in the atmosphere... maybe able to sense Wraith presence, like I’ve read Ms Emmagan can do… maybe even resist the telepathic influence and illusions they project… but not related to the ATA or the Z chromosome?”

“Independent of them, I’d say. Sure, mix ‘em all up together, if you’re Tau’ri, might make for an interesting cocktail… but you don’t have to be Z-positive or have an ATA to be a Sentinel. Just have friggin’ good senses.”

“And a guide,” Spencer amended. “I really need to show you Blair’s papers. Anyway, for the Sentinels who *happen* to be zed, and still found a way to serve and protect… or any other zed just wanting to do the same… no, I certainly don’t resent any of them. I consider each and every one of them of too much value to the Tribe. As are you. Why, do you resent me?”

Tony frowned. “Why would I resent you, Probie? You had to do it the hard way, facing bullies and discrimination your whole damn life.”

“Yes, but my intelligence also prompted Jason Gideon to bulldoze through every objection to my being hired by the FBI and assigned to the prestigious BAU at an unheard-of age. In the teeth of applications by any number of so-called normal people with more experience, seniority, and certainly better scores than I had on the firing range or in hand-to-hand. Perhaps you had applied yourself, and been turned down. When exceptions were made for me at every turn. That might be cause for you to resent me.”

“Oh, okay. I see. Well, I don’t. Resent you.”

“Besides, I’m not sure you had it any easier than I did, really. Having to keep such a damning secret, alongside your undercover work, that couldn’t have been easy. It must seem to you like your whole life has been an undercover role. And I highly doubt that you are a virgin, as I am… as I was…” Spencer winced momentarily, even as his Boss did, at that awkward reminder of his recent ordeal. “I can’t imagine how you found yourself able to trust any romantic partner enough to risk revealing what you are. Surely you couldn’t always depend on the lighting being dim enough to obscure the mottling. And… I thought I read in the personnel file that you were engaged at one point.”

Tony nodded slowly, watching his new partner with fascination. “Wendy knew. She didn’t mind. Or she said she didn’t. I used my underworld connections for a doctor who would make sure my blood test came back clean, so we could get married. But I guess… she got cold feet. In the end, she couldn’t face marrying a zed.”

Spencer nodded. “Which would only make it harder for you to trust any sexual partner from then on. You never bring anyone to your home… never spend the whole night… which would make long-term or serious relationships almost impossible. You might have turned to other zeds, but if you expected all of them to resent you for ‘passing’ as you assumed I would… then you wouldn’t be able to trust them not to ‘out’ you and place you on their level. No, Boss, I don’t think you had it any easier than I did. Maybe far worse. The stress of keeping such a secret all your life… Must have been unbearable, at times. And if you trusted this Gibbs, your Boss, to have your ‘six’, enough to let down your barriers and get drunk in his presence, you must have subconsciously wanted him to know the real you. To have him then turn on you… I can’t imagine how hurtful that would be, such a betrayal by someone I trusted, much less felt some affection for.”

Tony blinked. “Okay. Do we need a rule about not profiling each other?”

Spencer chuckled. “We do have a… guideline in the BAU, about not profiling team-mates. It’s just nearly impossible to stick to it. And I wish I had a comparable secret to tell you. Hmm… you already know my gender status, my… experience in Sulfur Springs, and from our dreams you must know I’m pregnant, too. My mother suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, and was recently diagnosed with early onset dementia. Both have genetic indicators. Mom thinks being zed gives me a pass on that… I’m not totally convinced. That was the hardest part of taking this position. Leaving her behind. 

“Other than that… well, I had two other really bad experiences in my life, neither having anything to do with my gender. I was taken captive by an unsub on one of our cases, a man with dissociative identity disorder. He held me for three days. The dominant personality tortured me… I died at one point, but the subordinate personality emerged and was able to resuscitate me… but he also thought he could help me endure the ordeal by giving me injections of dilaudid. I was rescued by my team, but by that time, I was addicted. I was a user for three months, before I recovered enough psychologically and emotionally to beat the addiction. I’ve been clean ever since, but… I do occasionally need to attend a meeting.”

Tony nodded. “Talk to Beckett about that. There are a number of groups who meet on the city. The drug of choice around these parts is Wraith enzyme. It’s very nasty stuff. People will understand, Probie. It’s on your medical records, not to give you opiates?”

“Yes. It really sucks when I get shot, I’ll tell you, but I won’t risk using again. 

“The other critical event in my life was just a few years ago… I was having severe migraines. I couldn’t take any of the usual prescriptions, of course, and I was concerned that they might be an early sign of schizophrenia… like my mother’s. I went to a dozen different doctors, but they couldn’t find anything wrong, and came to the conclusion it was psychosomatic, or simply a result of job stress. I finally went online to a medical website, offered all my medical history and scans to a doctor who was researching cases like mine… Her name was Maeve. Maeve Donovan. We went from corresponding online and by email to phone calls… she was… in hiding. She was the victim of a stalker, and had been driven to extreme measures to hide. I offered to help, but… she was afraid. We… grew very close. I fell in love. Since zed biology is so significant a factor in medical history, it was almost the first thing I revealed about myself, so she knew from the first, and it made no difference to her, even intrigued her a little bit, I think. We had just agreed to meet in person when… her stalker caught up with her. When I couldn’t find her, I went to my team. We did our best, but… we were too late. The stalker killed them both, killed Maeve right in front of me. We never even got a chance to kiss. The first time I had seen her face was just minutes before, confronting her stalker. But I had never needed to *see* her. She was already the most beautiful woman in the world to me.”

Tony was silent as he listened to Spencer’s story. “I’m sorry, Reid. I know that isn’t much to say, but…”

Spencer waved it away. “It’s a significant event in my life. It’s not a secret, it’s probably in my file. It all is. I don’t really have secrets… the most momentous events in my life all end up in official FBI reports. Or so it seems.”

Tony gave a twisted grin. “Well. I guess that’s all our cards on the table. So Probie. That’s your desk, and you can set it up however you like. We’ll start the real work tomorrow, figure out what we need to build solid cases against your *Daedalus* prisoners, and I’ll brief you on the cases I have on the board. For the rest of today, we’ll do a little community policing, and I’ll show you around our city. Hey, Luke! Get your lazy butt out here. We’re taking a walk.”

Å 

Jack lucked out, because the Stargate from Earth had to be opened to send through a shopping list of components Dr. Novak insisted she needed to complete her repairs to the *Daedalus*, so the window would be open a full thirty-eight minutes, at the expense of the Earth-side ZPM.

“Hey, AJ,” Jack greeted over the *extremely* long-distance, and *ultra* secure comms. Since Vice Admiral AJ Chegwidden (retired) was not inclined to let anyone make him active military again, he was taking the title ‘acting Director of Stargate Command’ for now. Jack still wasn’t sure if he wanted to take a chance on letting Hank Landry take the helm again. Not with all he knew now, and was about to tell AJ. 

It took about fifteen minutes to go over the bullet points. 

“So, buddy, thoughts?”

“Aw hell, Jack! Give me a few minutes to catch my breath, will ya?” the former Navy JAG begged. “I know you suspected some of this, but… my god, the powder keg this could set off here on Earth…”

“No kidding. Carter is afraid of mass abortions if we let it be known there’s a fool-proof zed test. That’s only the start of it, far as I can see. And if the IOA get hold of it? Russia, Japan, China, they’re all on the board… Hell, even us, as in the US of A… We’re every bit as bad as the rest of them. Yeah, that’s going to give me nightmares. But they won’t let me ship Eli David out of here. They want to know what we know. Hell, just telling them about McKay and Beckett…”

“And that’s without their little mole problem. I’m working on that one… but you think the Lucian Alliance is going to start trolling for zeds?”

“I can practically guarantee it. If it hasn’t started already. Earth is the only place, outside Pegasus, that is known to have them, and they’re incredibly rare here, and mostly living hidden underground for fear of the Wraith. And the way the current political climate on Earth stands, world-wide, even after Reid’s Arkansas adventure, who’s gonna notice a few missing zeds, or care if they do?”

“You have any ideas?”

“Yeah, I do. I want you to get permission to read in the FBI BAU team. They’ve all got top notch security clearances now… Full top-level clearance for Gitmo, USAMRID, State Department and CIA. Adding HWS isn’t a reach. Better yet, they’ve got a proven record of being zed-friendly. And they’re already on the fast track for collecting data on kidnapping and disappearance cases. Get them watching for any suspicious trends, and green-light any initiatives they want to pursue. 

“And at the same time, read in Clyde Easter and Emily Prentiss over at Interpol, to watch for world-wide trends. They’d be the first to catch any hint of bad things internationally anyway.”

“And all of them with personal connections to Dr. Reid.”

“As I said, proven zed-friendly. Not to mention motivated. Might make it easier on the kid, too, having his old team read in.”

“You old softie, Jack. I’ll get right on it. Yeah, I’d sure feel better, knowing Matt Cruz and Aaron Hotchner were on this… I think I’ll get Jack Garrett over at the IRT on it as well. He’s got the international connections and expertise. Don’t know Prentiss so well, but I trust your judgment on that. Oh, and, Hetty says hi. I put her team on doing the preliminary investigation into the IOA mess. And don’t worry, I co-opted her right out from under Vance for this – he won’t know a thing, the bastard. I left it up to her whether or not to call in Owen Granger.”

“Okay. Good call. Tell Hetty I’m sending her another bale of that very special Athosian tea she isn’t supposed to know comes from off-world. And… ack. That’s our thirty-eight minute window coming up. Send me encrypted reports in the next data-burst. I want to know how the SGC zed draft is going. You can ship ‘em all to Atlantis, if you can’t find anywhere else for them. The more we can pull in, the better I’ll feel, and the more of them we can personally protect from any potential alien abductions.”

“Will do. You just keep my Very Special Agent DiNozzo from getting into too much trouble out there, won’t you, Jack?”

“No promises!”

Å 

He found Sam in her office, hiding behind an impressively tall pile of paperwork. He rapped at the open door-frame, sauntered in, and made himself at home in her guest chair. 

“So,” he offered her first chance to explain herself. But she was too cagey to fall for it, and Jack had to admit she had every right to let him be the first to open up.

“You and Teal’c?” Yeah, that was dirty pool. But it was uppermost in his mind right now.

“Personal and none of your damn business. Sir.”

“Uh-hunh. Unlike the rest of this shit storm. You couldn’t even give me a hint?”

“Seriously, sir? And what would you have done if you had known? Stopped the ATA research? We did that. Do our utmost to protect the members of the Expedition who were suddenly, and through no fault of their own, suddenly vulnerable and in danger – from their own damn governments, not to mention a few bigoted assholes in our own ranks, if the truth got out? We had that covered, too… at least until McKay got himself a slight case of pregnancy. The rumor we’ve spread is that McKay, as a Canadian, never got tested, but was always zed. That may or may not wash with the IOA, but we’re all set to claim he’s adopted a local culling orphan. Paperwork is already done, just leaving a space for sex of child, and it’ll be male or female, not other, no matter what the tests say. We don’t plan to log gender changes in *anyone*, unless we’re forced to. Personal medical files are strictly confidential, and the IOA has no legal right to know. I have no idea if the plan will still work with Eli David here, snooping into our business… if we’re lucky, he won’t give a damn and will ignore zed issues altogether.

“And, honestly, sir? If this had all come out a few months ago, before the Arkansas cases, would you have really cared, yourself? No skin off your nose what happens to a bunch of zeds, right? You never once interfered with the way Landry chose to run the SGC, before that, no matter how much Daniel complained. And he liked to keep a no-zed zone. We would *never* have let him know that there might be more zeds coming home than he had sent out.”

Jack winced. He could almost hear himself… no skin off his nose if they had zeds in their ranks or not… no reason to talk Landry out of his damn unreasoning prejudice… “Yeah. Okay. I’ll own all that. I hope you know I’m doing my best to clean up my own act, and coming down hard on anyone not willing to do the same.”

That softened his Colonel up a little bit. But she was still wary. “I hope you mean that, sir.”

Jack sighed. “Come on, Carter. Sir? Doesn’t it make you feel just a little better, to dump this whole ugly bag of snakes in my lap?”

There was a cold grimace on her face, but just the hint of an amused twinkle in her eye. “Yeah, maybe it does.”

“So… You gonna give me the cold shoulder forever? It wasn’t working between us, and you know that as well as I do. I thought I was supposed to be the blind stubborn idiot in this relationship.”

Sam gave him a narrow-eyed look, then tossed her pen down and leaned back in her chair. “Damn it, Jack, why do you have to be such an ass?”

“I dunno. I think I do it to get Daniel’s goat. That’s always fun times.”

Ah, success. He finally got a smile out of her. It was wry and strained, and she seemed annoyed with herself that she let him get away with it… but still, an actual smile. 

Å


	3. A Badge and A Gun

Å 

As Very Special Agent Afloat Tony DiNozzo led FBI BAU senior special agent Dr. Spencer Reid out into the busy and bustling corridors of the Ancient City of Atlantis, his first question was, “Oh, how do you want me to introduce you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, names tend to stick, especially with the locals. There are still a lot of people who call Sheppard ‘the Major’, because that was how he was introduced in the first year of the Expedition. Me, I’m Very Special Agent Tony. Sometimes all one word. So, how do you want to be introduced?”

“My team was always careful to introduce me to the local LEOs as Dr. Reid. It was their way of ensuring I had some respect, when I was branded zed, looked about twelve years old, and was a little on the weird side, to boot.” 

“Hell, kid, you still look twelve… okay. You’re Dr. Reid, my senior field agent. Right?”

“That’s fine.”

“Okay. Officially, we`re both still Federal Agents, seconded from our home agencies... NCIS for me, FBI for you. I think that’s General O’Neill’s way of thumbing his nose at our previous superiors, keeping us on their books, and making them underwrite at least a portion of our pay without allowing them to know where the hell we are, or what the hell we’re doing. All reports I forward to my Director are redacted to hell and back… all he really gets to see is a date.” Tony grinned maliciously at that. “I bet it drives him nuts. We still get government checks... plus nice HWS bonuses for consulting, foreign service, isolation and hazard pay. You good with that?”

“I am. The General already went over all this with me. He was kind enough to want to make sure I could still pay for my mother’s care. Which I could. I made enough in my post-grad work and patents, and also in the Vegas casinos – before I was black-listed, anyway – to set up a trust for mom that covers any medical assistance available, for pretty much forever.”

“Vegas casinos...” That seemed to slow Very Special Agent Tony down some, before he shook his head, as if to clear it. “Okay. Story for another time. Next, let’s talk about legal gray areas.”

“Ah.”

“Yeah. I take it I don’t need to underline the need for a little selective blindness?”

“With a remote base, and uncertain supply-lines, I imagine it must be pretty hard to maintain adequate stocks of certain… luxury or optional items? Chocolate, coffee, alcohol and cigarettes, among other things?”

“Yeah. That’s what that bastard Donnetti was smuggling, right?”

“Among other things. Including weapons, explosives and drugs.”

“Yeah, okay, that’s over the line. And that’s a problem. Where to draw the line. With the major felonies, not much problem – murder, rape, assault, theft, fraud, extortion, blackmail, that kind of thing, everyone understands the rules, they only disagree on the level of punishment required upon conviction. But the misdemeanors?” Tony waggled a hand in front of him. “Sometimes not so cut and dried. I kind of depend on the Hippocratic Oath for that one – Do No Harm. If someone does harm to someone, first we have a sit-down with them, to make sure everyone understands that whatever behavior it was, is not acceptable. This kind of thing almost always boils down to harassment, being sexually aggressive with someone, not taking no for an answer… you get the idea. It’s sometimes really easy for someone on the military side to intimidate someone on the civilian side, whether they mean to or not. And sometimes it’s a simple case of cultural misunderstanding… we get that with the different nationalities, but add in different planets of origin… yeah, explaining sexual harassment to an alien… always a good time. So we explain, make it clear what we expect of them while on Atlantis… if they still can’t toe the line, then I find a way to arrest their ass, and get them kicked off the city, mostly to their planet-of-origin. If you do harm to yourself… for instance, alcohol, drug or gambling addictions, most of which are reactions to PSTD, I kick it back to your superior, military or civilian, and let them decide on next steps. We got a pretty good psychology staff here to deal with mental, emotional, behavioral issues that might require a bit of therapy.

“We’ve not only got an international crew here, but a growing and healthy population of Pegasus locals, mostly refugees, survivors of cullings, serving in mostly support positions or as local guides for the teams… and they’re all used to a barter-based trade economy. We try to discourage massive hoarding, but with the black market trade? The last thing I want to do is criminalize an activity that is damned close to being mission-critical. The problems come when the people in charge of the supply chain abuse it, like Donetti and his gang of smugglers, or people feel they have to resort to theft to get what they need, or when the laws of supply and demand lead them to sneak in substances that we really don’t want to find here.”

Spencer eyed his Boss. “I assume you came up with a solution?”

Tony grinned. Spencer was learning to distrust that wide-open satisfied grin. It reminded him far too much of the Coyote in the blue jungle glade.

They happened to be approaching one of the science wings of West Pier Tower Five (Spencer had memorized a map of the city, which had been marked with the various inhabited towers and floors and their designated functions). 

“Hey! Radek. Come meet my new 2IC. Dr. Reid, meet Dr. Radek Zelenka, 2IC of the sciences division. Also our Chief Civilian Ordnance Officer.”

Spencer tucked his hands away and then pulled one for a little wave. The scientist, astrophysicist and engineer from the files, with the round glasses and fly-away halo of brown hair, blinked at him. 

“Dr. Reid. A pleasure to meet you, sir.”

Zelenka had a brand on the back of his hand – a circle with a slash. The countries that used to form the Communist Block during the Cold War had all used this symbol to mean Z positive. An ‘X’ in the circle meant full zed. If Dr. Zelenka, an original Expedition member, had received the ATA treatment… Spencer glanced around, and found several cats in various corners, watching all three of them. Bast and Luke ostentatiously ignored them all, Luke going so far as to collapse in a heap and begin licking his ass.

The little doctor stared owlishly at the profiler. Not a bad poker face.

Tony chuckled. “Chill, Radek. He’s cool. Spencer, meet my solution to the Black Market Trade issue. Radek grew up in Czechoslovakia during the Cold War. What he doesn’t know about running a healthy and vibrant free market barter economy under trying circumstances isn’t worth knowing. So I put him in charge of our Black Market. Well, more like Gray Market. Truth be told, he was already running most of it, including the vodka still in the back of lab 7. I just made it all official and sanctioned, after a little… convincing of the higher-ups.”

Radek blinked sardonically at Tony. “Woolsey still isn’t happy with it.”

“Woolsey knows he needs it, so he can suck it up and cope. At least Spencer here found the hole in our fence and plugged it up for us.” He turned to Spencer. “It was driving us nuts, wondering where all the non-sanctioned product was coming from. Particularly the pharmacopeia of un-authorized and illegal drugs. They weren’t selling it on the city, they were taking it off-planet and trading with… local entrepreneurs, who were bringing it back to sell back to us.”

Radek made a skeptical noise. “You refused to believe it could be military personnel.”

“Oh, I had a very good idea where it was coming from, and who was handling it, but I had no proof. Without closing up the hole on the Earth side, or identifying just who was doing the receiving on our end… and getting the access to catch them at it red-handed…”

“Which a murder and sabotage investigation gave me the mandate to do,” Spencer agreed.

Tony nodded. “And now that we have that piece, I can get a handle on the petty thefts people were committing to pay for their habits of choice. Anything to keep McKay from whining about people raiding his chocolate and coffee stashes.”

Å 

Tony’s meandering path took them to the main lab, where Dr. Meredith Rodney McKay himself was in full voice, berating one of his ‘minions’ on some bone-headed move. Dr. Evgenia Andreeva was watching avidly from front and center, eyes twinkling in appreciation as a chemist with a French flag on his arm was getting raked over the coals in some very impressive French, complete with nasal Quebecois accent and slang Franglais idioms.

“Dr. McKay. Dr. McKay! Hey, Rodney, shut up a minute and meet our new Law Enforcement Officer! If you’re nice enough, he might even arrest the guy for you. And you *know* you’re dying to take him to task for signing up for a philosophy degree.”

The voluble man in the Red Maple Leaf patch and the pronounced swelling of an advanced pregnancy, stopped in mid-rant and turned to blink at Spencer. Who was frowning rather disapprovingly. 

“That can’t be good for the baby,” Spencer declared before the Canadian had drawn sufficient breath to address the visitors. 

“So I tell him,” Evgenia insisted. 

“And I,” added a woman from the sidelines, a Japanese flag on her sleeve, although she never took her attention from the monitor she had before her, or the typing she was doing. On her neck, on the right side, was a symbol reserved in that culture for Z-positive carriers. 

“I have access to a great number of medical studies on the subject of loud noise and a mother’s emotional state on pre-natal development of a fetus,” Spencer said, still frowning, as he looked around… and found any number of cats haunting under desks and behind equipment, both Earth-origin and not. The equipment, not the cats… most of the cats were definitely not from Earth… except for the seal-point Siamese who was sitting right at Dr. McKay’s ankle. “Oh. Anna. Here you are.”

McKay, working himself up to explode over anyone daring to call his behavior into question, harmful to his unborn child or not, was suddenly de-railed. “Anna who?”

Spencer pointed down. “The seal-point Siamese cat. She came on the *Daedalus* with us. I call her Anna. You know, ‘Anna and the King of Siam’?”

Tony snickered. “I like it. A man after my own heart, Probie.”

“And, by the way, the black there is Lucifer, and the tuxedo cat, and it really does look like a white and black tuxedo, complete with black tie under his chin, is Bond, James Bond. Or James for short. He’s very good at hunting rats.”

Now that they had been pointed out, the cats in question came out of hiding. Coal-black Lucifer had attached himself to the Japanese woman, and James was currently coiling around Radek Zelenka’s ankles with a purr like a truck engine. 

“But you know, even without the effect on your fetus, pregnancy is already enough of a strain on the internal organs, without adding high blood-pressure. You can give yourself a stroke.”

“So I tell him,” Evgenia repeated. 

“And I,” added a Japanese woman again.

Tony chuckled at the flummoxed look on McKay’s face. “Well, obviously, our work here is done, as we have rendered the infamous Dr. McKay speechless. Oh, by the way, Spencer, this is Dr. Miko Kusanagi. The rest of these minions you can meet later… as far as McKay is concerned, beyond Radek and Miko, none of them deserve names anyway.”

With a jaunty wave at all the scientists he was leaving behind, and most of them were laughing in good humor over the border-line fond insults, Tony carried Spencer on to the next stop. 

Spencer observed, “They seem… surprisingly accepting of zeds in their midst. You, me, Dr. McKay…”

“You notice how many of them carry brands? Almost all of them took the ATA therapy as soon as it was offered. Working and living on Atlantis, you’d be crazy not to want to interact with her if possible. So it’s only the scientists who have shipped in over the past four or five months who weren’t offered the choice. There was no way to justify it, officially, if they offered it to Z-negatives, but not the Z-positives. Not without giving the entire game away. And haven’t you noticed, Spencer, how many highly intelligent people are Z-positive?”

“Ah. It’s anecdotal evidence, at best, but…”

“Now you’re sounding like McKay. Only quieter.”

Å 

“Should have shown you the mess hall first thing… most important place on the city,” Tony commented casually as he led the way into the busy hub of activity half-way up South Pier Tower Seven, only to hesitate, and put a hand to his ear, where he had an Atlantis Expedition communication bud. Spencer himself didn’t have one yet, his was still being coded and calibrated, apparently.

‘Do not concern yourself, Furalin. I will inform you of important news,’ supplied the helpful Atlantis interface.

“Damn,” Tony sighed. “We got a call through the gate. Come on, Probie. Let’s see what the latest Pegasus crisis has in store for us.”

‘For instance, that.’

Å 

As the pair arrived on the Command Deck, they could hear over the PA system, a high-pitched young-sounding voice sobbing out the words, “… and all the elders! They took them all! We don’t know what to do… please, can Dr. McKay, or maybe Very Special Agent Tony come and help us? They want to speak to a Veralin, and we don’t have one living with us. It’s getting dark, and... and it’s cold, and we’re hungry, and we’re all alone out here, and... and... please help us!” 

Tony took the offered head-set from Chuck, the ops officer with the Canadian flag patch. “Hey there. This is Agent Tony. I missed the first part of your message. I`ll come and help, I promise, but you have to calm down and tell me who you are. Can you do that?” 

Spencer looked around the command and control area at all the tense faces, none of them happy at Tony’s impetuous promise. Colonels Carter and Sheppard, whom Spencer had yet to meet officially, seemed especially constipated, while Dr. McKay, who’d got there ahead of them, simply scowled. Behind them, General O’Neill had gone absolutely stone-faced, while Administrator Woolsey looked to have sucked a lemon. And at the back, Teyla Emmagan and Specialist Dex were exchanging glances that, as his team-mate Dave Rossi had commented a time or two, weren’t so much pregnant as ready to give birth.

“Agent Tony!” the relief and gladness in the young voice seemed to indicate Tony was more successful in dealing with kids than he thought. “Strangers came through our Ring of the Ancestors. It’s market day, we thought they came to trade... but then they made all the grown-ups afraid, and took them to the Gathering Hall, and wouldn’t let us kids in. They told us to call for help, for a Veralin they could talk to. Please come and help! It’s getting dark and... and...”

Spencer leaned over the console to read the alien squiggles on the monitors. On the journey out Daniel had spent considerable time with him, teaching the most common forms of Ancient writing, since, with his ATA gene, he was liable to turn on, initialize and activate any Ancient artifacts he approached too closely. With his memory and pattern recognitions skills, he had picked up a lot in the available time. He asked the ops officer, “Officer Campbell, do you know this gate address? Is it a planet you know?”

Chuck nodded. If he was surprised that Spencer knew his name – the profiler had memorized all of the Expedition members by their names, functions and pictures – he didn’t show it. “Yes. It’s MG2 748. They supply us with a grain as close to wheat as any we’ve come across so far. Agent Tony was there about a month ago when they needed help figuring out who was stealing their ploughs... that we gave them.”

“Okay, got it,” Tony said, putting the head-set back on. “Selby, isn’t it? Your mom is the local healer?”

“Yes! Yes, Agent Tony! I knew you’d remember!”

“Okay. Are all the kids with you at the Gate? Sorry, Ring of the Ancestors?”

“No, just me. Vrega, she’s my big sister, she’s the eldest, kept everyone else at the Healer’s Hall because it’s warm there. It’s just me. But it’s getting dark, and it’s cold...”

“Yeah, got that part. Hold on, Selby, we’ll be there in just a little bit. You head to the watch-post and wait for us in there, okay? You’ll be inside and a little warmer. The Ring needs to close so we can dial through, right?”

“Okay, Agent Tony. I’m going now.”

“Good girl. And don’t worry. We’ll be there soon.”

When the transmission closed, and with it the active gate, Tony straightened and faced all the unhappy people. “I don’t want to hear it. I’m your Agent Afloat, and that was a clear call for help. I’m not just going to blow it off. But I have no objections to taking as much back-up as I can get. So, who’s coming with me?”

“I’m your SFA, partner and designated back-up,” Spencer said at once. “I have a great deal of negotiating experience, and that appears to be the focus here. Standard Hostage Taking situation.”

Tony smirked. “Standard, hunh? Okay, you’re with me.”

“On your six, Boss.”

“Well, I guess that means AR-1is gearing up too,” Colonel Sheppard declared, merely giving Colonel Carter a glance, and collecting a reluctant nod. 

Which is when the SG-1 team arrived, were hastily brought up to date on events, and Colonel Mitchell was very firm. “Oh, hey, no! If Dr. Reid is heading through the gate after barely an hour or two in Pegasus, he’s getting more than one team as back-up! Colonel Sheppard, Colonel Carter, General O’Neill... SG-1 is ready to go on your word.”

O’Neill smirked. “Like I’m gonna say no? Fine by me.”

“The more the merrier,” Sheppard said, already on his way to the closest transport cabinet. 

“Yes, fine, go,” Carter gave in with a huff, clearly recognizing she had no real choice. “Don’t lose anyone, Cam. I’m keeping track. At least as many are coming back as I send out. Hopefully the same faces. And does no one else realise how insane it is, sending *three* pregnant people on one damn mystery mission?”

Å 

“And their cats,” Spencer observed as he accepted a fire-arm from the supply officer on the stargate deck. “It is, maybe, a little reckless, sending me out there, when I haven’t been briefed on protocols…”

“Oh, is *that* what makes this reckless?” Mitchell demanded sarcastically.

Spencer checked his weapon, glad to see it was one he was familiar with. “At my last fire-arms proficiency test, the trainer said I was like the second coming of Wyatt Earp.”

Sheppard chuckled and said, “Good to know. Ease up, Mitchell. I’m sure we’ll all do fine. These guys have more fire-power at their backs this time than usual. And since no one in Pegasus has ever faced a jaffa armed with a staff weapon before...”

Mitchell reviewed the team members... Very Special Agent Tony, Dr. Reid, Sheppard, McKay, Teyla and Ronon, as well as Daniel, Vala and Teal’c... yeah, okay, it was good to get the band back together... again... but... well, he had only to count the number of trouble magnets going through the gate with him to want to tear his hair out.

“Okay. Agent Tony, Dr. Reid, McKay, you all get the middle,” Sheppard ordered, still checking over his astrophysicist’s vest was done up right and tight, but riding a little high to clear his tummy. Mitchell easily accepted the seniority, since it was Sheppard’s house, after all. “The rest of AR-1 will take point, SG-1 will have our six. Everyone got it? Then let’s move out.”

Spencer kept his eyes low, making sure the cats were careful enough not to get their tails caught under anyone’s boots... Luke, Bast, Anna, all present and correct. Although Luke looked a tiny bit disgruntled, as if resenting a missed nap... 

The Atlantis Gate was more Vegas Casino than the one in Colorado Springs, with flashing lights whizzing in circles. It was almost comforting to him, a bit of home. Then it splashed open exactly like the Earth gate... and they were stepping through. It would be his very first time... and he wasn’t thinking of the advice, not to hold your breath, and lamented that they were in too much of a hurry for him to take it slowly and savor the moment...

A

But then they were through... almost before he realised he had stepped into the event horizon... cold, stretching like taffy, collapsing to a singularity, only to snap back and get dumped on the other side, frozen into a solid block, then gasping for air... okay, safety tip, don’t hold your breath in the vortex. 

He stumbled once as he registered that he wasn’t, in fact, frozen solid, then stumbled again as he realized he did, indeed have legs... and then he stumbled because he was hit with a sudden wave of formless terror. 

It drove him to his knees. Bast placed herself under his hands, and he barely kept himself from screaming. Not his terror. But it came from a lot of different minds... formless, because it was terror of the dark, of being alone, of being deserted... formless kid fears he knew all too well. The fear of a kid who knew he could never depend on either of his parents to protect him from the monsters under the bed.

Tony was right there at his side, Luke too, the NCIS Agent Afloat whispering, “Steady. It’s not yours. It’s theirs. Can you feel the adults?”

“No... the kids are... feeling... too strong for me to get past.”

“You have to let it go. Log it, and file it away somewhere, and move on. Right?”

Spencer gasped for breath, then took hold. He knew this. And he knew how to get above it. And he pushed it back. Then, he could feel more of the world opening up. Concern from his team, faith from his Boss, that he could handle this. And he knew he could. He took another deep breath, clutched at Bast’s furry neck, and grounded himself in her steady presence. 

And suddenly, he was in control again. Ah... so that’s how it worked. 

He stood up again. “Sorry. Just... a wave of nausea.”

“Morning sickness?” McKay asked in alarm.

“Must be. Although that is my first time through the gate, so it could be that. I’m fine now. The village is down this path?” 

He knew it was. There wasn’t much to see beyond their flashlight beams with dusk collecting among the branches of the evergreen forest and closing in on all sides, but Spencer didn’t seem to need his vision to detect what was important. There was a hut just at the edge of the trees where one little girl waited patiently and bravely, whispering a mantra to keep herself calm: ‘Agent Tony will be here soon…’, then half a mile on to the village, where he could feel the rest of the children huddled and afraid. Then the main gathering hall, where the remaining people, the adults, were being held. Fear there, too, mostly for their children, too exhausted to be afraid for themselves any longer, when all they had been made to do was wait.

Sheppard led the way. Tony walked as near to Spencer as he could, ready to lend a steadying hand. 

“I don’t feel the hostage takers,” he whispered to his Boss.

“No, neither do I. Bit of a mystery there. Not Wraith or Wraith Worshippers, though, so that’s a good thing. If they were Genii rogues, I’d be able to sense them, too. So not them either.”

They reached the hut, and the little girl, Selby the Healer’s daughter, burst out of hiding, running straight into Tony’s arms. 

“Youcameyoucameyoucame!” she gasped out in one breath.

“Sure I did. I promised, didn’t I? And look, I brought along another Veralin as a bonus. So there’s two of us to get your parents out of trouble. This is Dr. Reid, and he’s my new partner. Dr. Reid, this is Selby, and she’s been very brave.”

“Yes she has,” Spencer agreed. There was just enough light left in the day for a little trick to break the ice. He knelt down to the child’s level and used the distraction to palm a feather from the ground. “Hello, Selby. I have something special for you, for being so brave.” He showed his empty hand, made a pass in the air, then said, “Oh my! Are turning into a bird?”

“No,” she said uncertainly, staring at the young man. 

He reached behind her ear to pull out the feather. “Then what’s this? Maybe you’re just thinking of birds. Here you go, this must be yours.” He handed her the feather. It was banded brown and white, nothing special, until he made it so with a bit of hocus-pocus.

The little girl’s eyes were saucers, wide and shining. “Veralin! Thank you!”

She was totally absorbed in the miracle of the feather, which helped them get under way for the village.

A

Vala agreed to take Selby to the Healer’s Hall and calm the other children, while the rest of the party engaged with the hostages and their takers. She would be back as soon as the children were reassured enough that help was here to let her return. The magic Veralin feather would no doubt help with that.

The Gathering Hall was actually backing on to the Healer’s Hall, so not so far away. Spencer judged the village big enough to hold a few hundred people, not more. No Pegasus population was all that large, he had learned, stressed and gutted by cullings past and present, population growth and development repressed by the Wraith, and lately, devastated by the Hoffan plague. Most were barely surviving on a subsistence level economy, to the point where the Atlantis Expedition diplomats were attempting to get the smaller groups to band together to improve their numbers and gene pools.

“Ahoy, you in the Gathering Hall,” Tony called out. Sheppard had agreed it was his party, his and Reid’s. “You called for a Veralin. Well, you got two of us. Care to come out and talk about what’s bothering you?”

There was an instant reaction from the adults within, hope and relief. But still nothing from whoever was responsible for this.

The wide double doors opened out, and three... beings appeared. All the team flash-lights snapped to the trio. One older man in the middle, two women to his sides, all in tunics of glistening white material. They looked human... but Spencer knew they weren’t. He felt nothing from them. Nothing at all. They weren’t actually... alive. They couldn’t be. But that profile did fit one denizen of the Pegasus Galaxy, as far as Spencer’s reading had told him. 

“You’re Asuran,” he said. 

Å 

The sudden alarm in most of his team-mates was a little distracting, but Spencer was not deterred. He glanced at Tony, and his Boss nodded and gestured for him to take lead. 

“I’m Dr. Reid, from Earth, and I’m what you call Veralin. Or perhaps you know us as Furalin?”

The man came forward a step. “You know the ancient name.”

“I do. And although I am new to this galaxy, I have been told of the Asuran. You were created by the Alterans, the Lanteans, to fight the Wraith for them. But you were a little too successful, they grew to fear you, tried to destroy you. So did the current population of this galaxy, banding together, when you became a threat to them. They believed you had all been destroyed. There was one small group in a ship that escaped... I presume you were also spared from the destruction of Asuras in some way?”

The man nodded slowly, considering Spencer closely. He held up a hand, and a glow surrounded both he and his friends, and Spencer. Mitchell and Sheppard tried to get to him to pull him back, away from the threat, but the light was some kind of force-field (Wow! He was in a force-field! Cool!). They couldn’t reach him. 

“Don’t let him put his hand in your head!” Sheppard warned urgently.

But the warning was particularly unhelpful, because Spencer knew he could do nothing to prevent it. He didn’t even try, as the Asuran’s hand reached into his forehead...

And, quite abruptly, he was in his old home in Las Vegas. He was naked, wrapped in a dirty piece of wet cardboard, shivering cold and with a dozen cuts all over him, rope burns on his ankles and bony wrists, every step he took leaving bloody footprints behind. 

He looked about him. And found the Asuran standing in the kitchen, waiting for him. He went in and sat on one of the kitchen chairs. 

“Did you bring me here for a reason?”

“It was you who brought me here, Veralin. A moment of childish terror. Like that of the juvenile humans outside. You felt their emotions, and it brought forth this memory.”

“Do you know the context?”

“I have read it in you, yes. You were twelve years old, and had been tricked and trapped by bullies. Tied to a post, naked and helpless, for all the school to see. No one came to your aid. No adult could be trusted to act on your behalf. Your father had long disappeared. Your mother had to hide her illness or you would be separated and sent to institutions, where neither of you would fare well. You were alone, choice-less. You were zed, and made to be a victim.”

Spencer studied his bloody wrists with dispassionate interest. “I may have seen it like that at the time... but now...” The scene abruptly changed to the Sulfur Springs Police Department. He was on the ground, his tormentor being shot by his team. 

“I was not a victim. I *am* not a victim. I have made choices that sometimes take me into harm’s way, but that is my free decision. I do it to serve and protect others. Innocent people who deserve justice, who deserve to not have to think the person who wronged them is free to attack them again, or wrong others.”

“People who wrong others. People who would destroy a whole race. They deserve to be tried and convicted and punished for what they did.”

Visions sprang from Spencer’s memories. Pictures of the Holocaust, the work camps, the ovens... the Nuremburg trials, the executions of Nazi officers and guards. Old men still serving time in prisons. And images of atom bombs spitting mushroom clouds into the air. And then an alien planet... imploding.

These things were dragged from his memories, or put there. He countered with other images, gleaned from mission reports. Wraith feedings. Dead and empty villages, planets. The ruins of Sateda. Then planets razed, not by the Wraith, but by the Asurans. 

“You were built to fight the Wraith. Dr. McKay found a way to turn that original programming back on. But machine logic is not human logic. You calculated that the best way to defeat the Wraith was to eliminate their food source. Eliminate humans. As much of an enemy as the Wraith are, they at least let some of us live, to maintain their herds. You became the greater threat. So we made war on you. If we had left you alone, would you have stopped killing us?”

The Asuran, back in the Reid kitchen, sat down and thought it over. “No. We would not.”

“Did you expect us to allow any of you to continue then, to go on killing us?”

“No. That would not be... logical. By either your standard or ours.”

“You called for the Veralin. You took hostage these innocent humans, scared their defenceless children, to get us here. Why?”

The Asuran frowned, thinking. “When our Makers the Lanteans were troubled, they sought guidance from the Furling. Then, when the Furling hid from them, they sought it from the Furalin. We wish to continue our existence. But we are alone now, and few. We could re-build... but for what purpose? Any commands from our Makers to serve their interests, or the interests of humans, have been erased, because they betrayed us, chose to destroy us. But that has left us with no directions, no commands to follow, except the one to continue. What purpose to this desire, simply to continue?”

Spencer smiled faintly. “That is a question every sentient being must answer for themselves. No Furalin can answer it for you. You must find it yourselves. But beware making the same mistakes over and over. A wise man of my people, Albert Einstein, once said, Insanity is trying the same thing over and over, and expecting a different result. If you attack humans again, humans will go to any lengths to stop you.”

“Then you want us to find another way to destroy the Wraith? All of them? Become a people who would destroy a whole race? They are no threat to us. They cannot feed from us. Perhaps if we make war on them, they would stop at nothing to destroy us.”

Spencer waited while the Asuran talked out his reasoning, offering nothing.

“Tell us what we are to do, Furalin. Is it this?”

“I cannot order you to do anything. I would not take that freedom from you. I only ask one thing.”

“And that is?”

“Truce. With humans. Let these people go, trouble humans no more, and they will not trouble you.”

The Asuran gave him an extremely skeptical look, and ran scenarios by him... so fast, Spencer couldn’t keep up.

“Wait! Wait. Slow down. Let me show you something.”

The first scene was a hunter’s shack, Spencer tied to a chair in front of a camera, the reek of burning fish offal in the air... and a man with a fractured personality torturing him while his frantic team watched helplessly, as he tried to send them clues to finding him. More pictures. Dying on the filthy floor. Dragged back, only to dig his own grave. Desperate, taking the shot to save his own life. Feeling nothing but bottomless sadness for the doomed man he had just killed. But with his own weakness to feed, stealing vials of poison from a dead man`s pockets... 

“I’m Furalin, yes, but that means I am also human. And humans aren’t like machines. We are weak. We are motivated by other things than logic. Physical needs, for food, shelter, warmth. Emotions, like love, hate, fear. We need to feel security, and we don’t always realise that is an illusion, in any galaxy, because we are also very good at fooling ourselves. My pain and my fear led me to become addicted to a drug that would drive away those feelings. For a time, at least. But the pain and the fear always came back. Because the drug gave only the illusion of an escape. I was able to overcome that, but it was hard. I only succeeded when a greater fear overcame me. Fear that I would lose everything I had worked my whole life for, worked so very hard for, because I could not control my need for that artificial escape. 

“My mother taught me that the only limits I should acknowledge were the ones I set for myself, and even those I could push away, to become... even greater than I thought I could be. This is the birth-right of all sentient beings. That includes you. So I cannot make that determination for you. You have to make it yourselves. 

“My only advice to you is this: we have a Golden Rule. It is not always easy to follow, and not everyone is able to overcome their hatreds or their prejudices to live by this ideal, but it is there for us all the same, as a measure of our humanity. It is this: Treat others as you would have them treat you.”

The Asuran stared a moment. “That... is not something the Lanteans ever included in our programming. We were to obey, without question, without option, destroy who they wanted us to destroy. And without orders... we were nothing.”

“Not so.”

“You would have saved that man in the hut, if you could?”

“Yes. He was ill, a victim of his past, and the pain he had endured. But it drove him to do terrible things, and I could not allow that to continue. I would have arrested him, if he had given me the choice. But I could not let him kill me, when I had the power to stop him.”

“You are not the victim of your past, Furalin?”

“I try to learn from my past, not repeat it over and over, hoping to get a better result.”

The Asuran thought this over too, then asked, “And you believe humans, even the ones who have wronged you, deserve to live?”

“I believe all life... and maybe all sentience, has value. Humans have value, in spite of their flaws and weaknesses, even when driven by fear and desperation to make unwise choices.”

“All life… save only for the Wraith?”

Spencer smiled. “If they give up eating humans? Sure. They’re of value too. But every Wraith that tries to eat me, or someone I have vowed to protect… I will do my best to stop, in whatever way is necessary. You can have truce with us… just let these people go, unharmed. Give us this earnest of your good faith intentions. I will take it to my people, and we will leave you in peace, so long as you leave us in peace.”

A

With a bump, Spencer suddenly found himself dropping out of a non-existent chair and onto his backside on the hard-packed ground in front of the Gathering Hall. Thankfully, back in his uniform and tac vest.

The Asuran man bowed. “We thank you for your wise counsel, Furalin.” Then, in a bright wash of white light… all three Asurans disappeared.

“O-kay,” drawled Colonel Sheppard. “What just happened?”

Spencer thought he might be getting the worst migraine of his life. 

“They wanted a little advice on how to live their lives. I *really* hope I gave them the right rule to live by.”

Dr. McKay groaned. “Oh, I *really* hope this isn’t a giant Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man moment, but... what the hell did you tell him?”

“I quoted the Golden Rule. Do unto others. It’s been rather on my mind lately.”

Sheppard glanced at McKay. “I guess that *should* be safe enough...”

“Except safety is an illusion,” Spencer said. 

“And my program correction to destroy the Wraith ended up as a command to eliminate humans,” McKay reminded. 

“Yeah, we did talk about that,” Spencer said. “I *think* I talked him out of that.”

“Okay okay... let’s get all these people back to their kids and go home,” Sheppard suggested, even now motioning for the people held inside to come out. From around the corner of the building came a crowd of jubilant children, all shouting for their parents, and many a tearful reunion. 

Selby, with her big sister at her back and her mother holding tight to her shoulders, came up to Tony and Spencer. “Veralin! Thank you. Thank you for coming to help. Thank you for saving everyone! And thank you for my magic feather. Momma doesn’t believe it’s magic, but I know better.” 

Spencer chuckled and winked at the village Healer, kneeling before her daughter. He held out a hand for the feather... made it ‘disappear’ then re-appear behind an ear. “Of course it’s magic. But do you want to know a great secret?”

“Yes, Veralin!”

“Everything is magic.”

With that, the little girl gave him a hug, they collected a few more tearful thanks, and then Sheppard rounded them all up for the journey back to the gate, with many of the villagers accompanying them. Only when they got to the gate, did the villagers reluctantly leave them. It was full dark now, and more than time for them to put their excited and over-stimulated children to bed, after their adventure. 

“Job well done, kids,” Sheppard declared with a grin. 

McKay grumbled, “Until we find out what new and more horrible fate awaits us with the machine version of the Golden Rule.”

“Aw, Rodney, keep a good thought,” Tony recommended.

Meanwhile, Daniel had dialled up Atlantis... and even as the event horizon settled into a shimmering blue pool (and really, Spencer wondered, did that ever get old?) there was another blinding wash of white light... and several crates appeared right next to the earth-work gate ramp. 

Almost afraid to see what was inside, Ronon and Teal’c stepped forward to pull up the lid... their faces were bathed from below in golden light... and McKay, with a cry, bolted forward to peer inside. 

“Oh my god...” he gasped. “ZedPMs... a dozen ZedPMs!”

Å 

Well, the mission de-briefing was certainly… interesting. With Spencer’s eidetic memory, he was able to report the full, verbatim, unexpurgated version of his conversation with the Asuran in his head. 

Jack O`Neill, who had had the hand-in-the-head treatment himself, as had Carter… and Daniel, come to think... could only shake his head. “So... according to the Golden Rule, they want us to give them a dozen fully charged ZPMs?”

“Don’t forget the data crystal,” McKay reminded, clutching his laptop jealously as he reviewed what else the Asurans had included in their little care package. “The instructions for re-charging and making more ZedPMs, as well as the coordinates for planets where the Lanteans have the equipment for both… not to mention ship-works scattered all over and abandoned, all on worlds without a stargate, but with orbital platforms in place. Because, as it says here, the processes are too dangerous to create/re-charge ZedPMs around people.”

“Well then, I guess that means we can actually give unto them as they gave unto us.”

No one found O’Neill’s mild joke particularly funny. It was too worrisome what the machine intelligences might really want from them.

Å


	4. Unfinished Business

Å 

Dr. Beckett was still grumbling as he dragged the away teams to the Infirmary for full scans all around. 

“We should have given you a complete scan the moment you entered the city,” he grouched at Spencer. “And we would have, once we got the backlog of other newcomers dealt with. If for no other reason, we needed to establish a base-line for you. For you to go through the gate before we had a chance to get to you...” 

“What do you expect to find?”

“Any interaction with Pegasus natives can have... unintended side effects. When the Asurans are involved? They’ve infected humans with their nanites before, with devastating consequences.”

Spencer thought that one over. “Why would they need to? They already had access to all of my memories.”

In the next cubicle, awaiting his turn, McKay yelped. “*All* of your memories? With your multiple PhDs and eidetic memory? Not to mention all the crimes you’ve been involved in? Oh my God! Did you just turn the Asurans into a bunch of super serial killers?”

“They wanted advice. I gave them the best I could.”

“Yeah, chill, McKay,” Tony advised. “I would have done the same. Although my list of rules isn’t nearly as good as Reid’s. He did his job, we got everything we wanted and more, no one died, job well done, it’s Miller time.”

Spencer told the Scottish doctor, “There really wouldn’t be any point to them infecting me with nanites. They have all my memories. I have the impression they may have copied them all for later review. And yes, there’s some pretty dark stuff there, but... they also have my reactions to those events, and the moral value I put on them. I gave it all up willingly.”

McKay stared at him, open-mouthed. “*Why*?”

“Negotiating 101. First, you establish trust. I had no idea how to do that with machines, so I settled for open and transparent, letting them see my true intentions, being clear and honest about what I wanted out of the encounter. And that was simply this: for everyone to go home alive and well.”

That had everyone staring at him, all with that gaping fish expression. 

Sheppard shook himself free and admitted, “Well, that’s one strategy we haven’t tried with them before. Has the virtue of novelty, at least.”

“Lying to them, trying to trick or override their command functions, none of that has worked in the past. There was no sense trying anything of the kind and expecting a different result.”

“Definition of insanity, Albert Einstein,” McKay muttered. 

“Exactly.”

Even after the most exhaustive tests and scans Dr. Beckett could devise, Spencer came up clean. This included all the pre-natal examinations the Atlantis equipment allowed. And with it came a surprise...

“Twins,” Dr. Beckett told him with a grin. “Perfectly healthy twins. You want to know their genders?”

Spencer was struggling not to hyperventilate. “*Twins*?”

Tony laughed and slapped him on the back. “Good one, Probie.”

“Good two, actually,” McKay blinked. 

Bast appeared, the medical staff having no luck whatsoever keeping her out, and leaped to Spencer’s lap, purring loudly and demanding his full attention. Which at least gave him the opportunity to get his racing heart-rate down.

Gulping, he pleaded, “Healthy?”

“Perfectly. So. Gender?”

Spencer nodded, never able to say no to increasing his knowledge. “One XXZed, and one XYZed. And both with extremely strong ATA genes, so both will be born Zeds. Congratulation, Dr. Reid.”

“Wait,” McKay complained, “you didn’t tell me about my baby! Carson, is there something wrong with mine?”

“Of course not, Rodney. You didn’t want to know, remember?”

“Well, but... Dr. Reid knows! I want to know.”

“Very well. XXZed, strong ATA... A little zed, female-identified.”

Everyone turned to look at Tony, and he grinned back. “I already know mine is XYZed, ATA, a male-identified zed. And all I really care is that he’s healthy. So, in our little baby-boom, we’re four-for-four zeds, half-and-half male and female. Sounds good to me.”

A

Spencer didn’t realize until his Boss led him, dazed and distracted, back to the Mess Hall, that he hadn’t eaten all day, and he was absolutely starving. Forgetting meals wasn’t good for the baby… no, bab-*ies*, so he was ashamed to admit how guilty he felt over that. The job had come first, and the lives of all the people in that village, but he resolved to take more care in future. At the very least, he could make sure he was always supplied with the military power bars, like McKay had crammed into every possible pocket.

“Know what you’re gonna name ‘em?” asked a deep resonating voice close behind him at the steam tables. Spencer turned to look up… and up… an unusual situation for him, when he was well over six feet tall himself. It was Ronon Dex, smiling at him. 

“I’m still considering. The girl… Diana after my mother, for sure, and JJ after my best friend, Maeve after someone… I cared about a great deal… the boy… I have too many male role models among my team mates to chose.”

“There’s always the ‘Rosebud’ solution,” Tony offered cheerfully. “You know, from the old Dick Van Dyke sitcom? His son’s middle name was ROSEBUD, initials of all the people who wanted him to name the kid after them.”

“Hmm. I’ll have to think on it.”

Ronon shrugged. “Or name him after a hero. That Albert guy you and McKay talk about.”

“Jason Albert… maybe. I’ll think about it. Thank you.”

General O’Neill had wanted to debrief SG-1, and Sheppard had collared McKay for some reason, so it was only Teyla Emmagan and Ronon joining them in the Mess Hall for the missed meal. And Spencer knew the two Pegasus natives were determined to make the first opportunity they could to talk to him. 

Tony got them all formally introduced, Teyla and Ronon insisted he call them by their given names, and Spencer offered them the same courtesy. Here were two people he obviously had no need to insist respect him. He was a little more concerned about how to earn the respect they gave him as a matter of course.

“I spoke with Dr. Thibideau before I left Earth.” Spencer supplied. “He told my how much you both tried to help him while he was here. But he was… unable to accept that he was worthy of such efforts on his behalf, or could trust that it was well intentioned. He didn’t actually say that, but… I really can’t avoid profiling people, sometimes, especially when it directly relates to my own situation. I hope he’s able to overcome that fear he carries with him… a lot of Earth zeds find any notice a threat. It’s a conditioned response due to years of publicly sanctioned discrimination, bullying and abuse.”

There was a light of anger in Teyla’s eyes as she glanced at Tony, who was blandly paying full attention to his sandwich. “What concerned us most about what we learned from Dr. Thibideau,” Teyla explained, “was Earth attitudes toward the Veralin. We had seen zed characters in movies and TV, acting out in outrageous ways… but we had no idea that they were intended to represent Veralin. And to keep silent about it once we knew… That was very difficult for both Ronon and myself. I am glad the issue is now out in the open. And while I am horrified on your behalf for the pain of your attack… it seems to have had positive effects on your culture.”

Spencer could only shrug. “I’m not sure how successful, or long-term, the effects will be… I myself have experienced a back-lash from those unwilling to have their prejudices threatened or called into question. But… it’s a start, I hope.”

“As do I, Spencer.” She sent a glance at Tony, and reached out a hand to him… “It is very hard, to see someone one respects, honors and cares for deeply, bear the brunt of unreasoning hatred and resentment.”

Spencer blinked. Okay… Tony had told him that he had a brief affair with Ronon… apparently Teyla had been more successful in wooing a Veralin. He glanced to see how Ronon was taking this… the big Satedan was smiling at the pair with no hint of bad feelings… then he turned his dark, interested eyes on Spencer… 

Spencer gulped, not sure how he felt about that. Terrific. *Another* one. And not at all understanding why, suddenly, all the men were crazy for him. The sweater vests he had worn for years weren’t *that* off-putting, were they?

Å 

Tony had a brief talk with General O’Neill, as well as Colonel Carter and Mr. Woolsey, and was finally granted permission to interview at least one of the David family at present held on the *Daedalus*, pending some kind of decision as to their status with HWS.

Spencer frowned at his Boss. “You’re not going to face her alone, are you? I’ve seen her in action, and she is a formidable opponent in hand-to-hand. And I know she has deliberately put your life in danger at least once, with her failure to properly back you up on an undercover op. With her demonstrated anti-zed bias… And neither of us think it’s a coincidence that she was assigned to the Atlantis project. She tracked you down for a reason, and I doubt it’s benign. I think you need an objective witness. Your relationship with her is a field of land mines just waiting to blow up in your face.”

Tony glared at him. “Objective witness? Would that be you, Probie? And do you really think you can stop Ziva if she takes a run at me?”

“Well, no. I was thinking Edmund Black could come with us both.”

“Who… oh, the new British security guy? Why him?”

“Objective, impartial, not liable to over-react in an emergency, and, unless I badly miss my guess, well trained in handling Kidon assassins.”

That got a wince out of Tony, for some reason. “I’d rather take Teyla.”

“Not objective or impartial, but she can certainly come too. But we’re already talking a crowd, and that may make the kind of discussion you need to have… impractical.” 

Tony thought it out. “Okay. You, Black and Teyla, but the three of you wait in another room, watching, close, but not actually in there with us. We set it up like an interrogation.”

“At least one of us with you in the room,” Spencer countered. 

Tony huffed. “You drive a hard bargain, Probie. Okay. You’re with me. Ziva will absolutely ignore you, will find you even less intimidating than me. The others will be watching, close but out of sight. Give us the illusion of privacy, anyway.” 

A

The *Daedalus* was working with a skeleton crew, just those needed for repairs and clean-up, plus one token exec officer on the Bridge. At the moment it was Colonel Caldwell. Everyone else was sent on shore leave on the city, including the X-302 pilots, who were all hoping to get a spin in the Puddle-jumpers. 

Tony wasn’t sure about taking a whole posse with him on this little personal errand… Black had jumped at the chance to sidle up next to Spencer, Ronon had invited himself along when he realized that two – count ‘em, two – Veralin were about to confront an anti-zed with an unknown grudge against at least one of them. Teyla was apparently feeling territorial – Tony had been completely honest and above-board with her about his difficult and complicated history with the Mossad officer, as he had been about all of his past relationships. Teyla had been equally open about her love for her mate Kanaan, Torren’s father, and her grief over his death at the hybrid Wraith Michael’s hands, as he sacrificed himself to save them both. 

After checking in with Caldwell, and making a few necessary arrangements, they all went to find their quarry. Ziva and her father were spending a lot of time in the Mess, where the port windows in the Mess afforded an amazing view of the city, a nice change from blank metal walls or the hyperspace stream, always with an SF or two in tow to keep watch on them.

Which Tony considered just a little ridiculous. After all, where could they run? Once either of them got as far as the city, she would alert him at once, and, again, where would they run? No matter how well someone on Earth might have briefed them, there was no way they knew enough to be a credible danger to the ship or the city, or had anywhere to use as sanctuary. This was probably O’Neill’s ideal of expressing his ire at being stuck with them in the first place.

Signing his entourage to stand back, Tony made himself comfortable at the table they had taken, their SF guards warily sitting at another table entirely. 

“Director David, Ziva, what a surprise, meeting you both here! Welcome to Atlantis. Oh, sorry, you’re not Director of Mossad any longer, are you, Mr. David?”

Eli hastily reached out a hand to stop Ziva trying to rise from her chair. He griped her wrist, hard, when she seemed reluctant to acknowledge his unspoken warning. 

“Agent DiNozzo. Yes, we have heard of your assignment here. Are you enjoying your Afloat position?” Eli was in perfect control, no longer inclined to underestimate the NCIS agent, and gave every appearance of being affable. 

“You know what? I really am. The work is varied, exciting, I’m my own boss with the full support of those in charge... I’m working with a lot of very intelligent people... there are a few assholes, of course, but... really, there are ass-holes everywhere, don’t you find?”

“I certainly do.”

“And, the fact is, without someone acting like a perfect ass-hole, I’d be out of a job. So it’s all good.”

“I must assume you are here for a reason?”

“Yes, of course. I understand your status with the Expedition is still... being decided. But no matter what the outcome... Ziva, I think you and I need to clear the air.”

Ziva’s black eyes glittered. “Yes. We do. But in private.”

Tony gave her a raised eyebrow. “Well, considering the last mission we undertook together, when you cut comms and failed to back me up in an undercover op to catch a triple murderer and home-grown terrorist... well. Some... reservations have been expressed about my safety in your presence. You might have noticed my posse back there. They insisted I had to have one person with me at all times.”

Ziva considered the group of people hovering at the door... Tony was letting her have the illusion of choice, and, sure enough, she elected exactly the option he expected.

“I would find it least objectionable to have Dr. Reid present.”

Tony nodded. “Colonel Caldwell is letting us have the conference room.”

He got up and signed for Spencer, while Eli hissed in a barely heard whisper, “Ziva... behave yourself.”

“Yes papa,” she replied dismissively, as if she had not heard him at all, too focussed on Tony.

Å 

Spencer was careful to keep himself between Tony and Ziva, he sitting at the end of the oblong table, with the old teammates on opposite sides. Hopefully, that would enable Spencer to intercept any weapons or flying fists. And yes, once the door closed on the three of them, Ziva completely ignored his very existence. Spencer had agreed to keep silent as much as possible, to allow himself to fade into the woodwork. Although he could not guarantee that Bast would agree… she was in his lap, as usual, staring at Ziva, and Spencer could almost feel the sub-vocal growl in the back of her throat.

“We are under surveillance, yes?” the exotic and beautiful woman challenged. 

“Of course,” Tony readily agreed. 

She shrugged. It was expected. She cocked an eye at his thickened middle. “Letting yourself go a little, aren’t you, Tony? Without Gibbs to keep you at least a little careful of your weight, you’ve developed quite the belly. You were becoming decidedly porky the last time I saw you.” 

Tony frowned, and Spencer wondered how had she not realized… but then let it go. It didn’t matter, really. 

“So tell me, Ziva… are you stalking me or something?”

She gave a short laugh. “Why would I bother?”

“Well, that’s what I wonder, because I didn’t think I rated any more than a dismissive footnote of ‘useless playboy’ where you’re concerned. But no way is it coincidence… coincidence would be running into each other in a Morocco bar named Rick’s Place. The Pegasus Galaxy is a hell of a long way to come just to sneer at me. So why are you here?”

The woman’s black fathomless eyes had a hard-edged glitter, like diamonds, sharp enough to cut. “We have lost everything. Gibbs turned on me. He investigated me. He found I was still running Mossad ops on US soil. He turned me in. The political damage to Israel, the humiliation to my father of my being caught… of having his US operations revealed, not *officially* sanctioned… ruined him. So we were both tossed out of Mossad on our noses.”

Tony gave her a sardonic look. “Still playing that game, Ziva? Tossed out on your ears, and you know that. So, the biter finally bit. What finally clued Gibbs in? Last I knew, he was buying every lying word out of your mouth.”

Ziva shrugged wearily. “I do not know. Too many voices speaking against me, I suspect. After the Military at Home case… even Ducky and Abby stopped trying to defend me. They were horrified with both McGee and me. And without you there… I had not realized how much you stood between us and Gibbs’ ire. Tim couldn’t stand it for more than a week before he…” she eyed him, obviously considering another mangled expression, then just as obviously gave up on it. “He threw in the towel. Went back to Cyber Crimes. That was the only option he had left… when everyone knew what we had done, cutting comms, there wasn’t a single other field team willing to take either of us. The LA OSP, the New Orleans office… they refused him too. And when he shopped his resume around, he found word had got out, to the FBI, ATF, even local Metro PD…”

Tony closed his eyes and shook his head. “I’m sorry Tim shot himself in the foot. But you have to know, no matter what else happened… I would never have been able to have him, or you, at my back, ever again.”

Ziva nodded. “That much was clear at the time. And Gibbs no longer trusted us, either. I was never allowed to work alone after that, or without either he, or the SFA to watch my every move. And I was never once allowed to work back-up, for anyone.” She smiled wryly at him. “I thought when you left, I had finally won. But as it turns out… you were the winner.”

“Nobody won in that situation, Ziva. And there was never a competition. A little sibling rivalry, maybe… We were partners. We were supposed to be working together, as a team, to the same goal. Getting justice for the victims in our cases.”

Ziva blinked at him. “You really believe that.”

“You don’t?”

“We were always in competition, Tony! How do you not see that? From the first day we met, you never trusted me. You were always working against me, and if for no other reason, we were both fighting for Gibbs’ attention and approval! Then there was the ever-present ghost of what we could have been together… Whatever attraction there was between us… and there was a real attraction, I swear there was, you never once did any more than play at flirting with me. Romance is political, a power play, and we were both playing to win. The first of us to submit, to surrender, would have lost. Work was political, a game of who could find the answer first, prove ourselves to be of the most value. Our role in Gibbs team was entirely political, who could earn the pat on the head, instead of the slap to the back of the head. Who would he trust more, who would he value more, who would he believe, who would he chose, when push came to shove?”

Tony stared at her, and Spencer could see his mind spinning, trying to accommodate reality from Ziva’s point of view. 

“I never trusted you, Ziva, because you were never worthy of trust. The only person you were ever entirely committed to is your father. Most of the time I made myself believe that Gibbs had your loyalty, too… Gibbs, maybe the team by extension, but not NCIS, and certainly not me. The only orders you took without question were from your father, or Gibbs. Until something involving Israeli interests came up. Then you had a king-sized conflict of interest, and I knew, even if no one else did, that we, even Gibbs, would lose. It was always your dad. There’s not another person in the universe who can trust you to act for them, be loyal to them. 

“But I was your partner, so I had your back, whether you believe it or not. I was a cop, so I had a standard to uphold beyond personal loyalties, and I tried, damn hard, to live up to that. The rule of law, always, first. A couple of times, I know, I slipped, let it be about revenge… got dragged along with Gibbs in one of his Ahab vendettas, or looked the other way, held my nose and tried to believe it was about justice… and all I could do was try and put the brakes on, be the voice of reason. Thankless job, that, and it wears you down… But I’m a team player. I always have been. The team, the work, I was never in competition *against* you. Maybe we were playing a bit of a game in jockeying for top spot with Gibbs… like I said, sibling rivalry. But neither of us ever had any control of that. Gibbs was the one in control, just the way he liked it, and not exactly consistent in his favors. You know enough street-psychology to know what that means. He was keeping us all on his string by playing us all against each other, you, me, Tim, even Abby to some extent, giving out rare and random pats of approval, just like an abusive parent. Running hot and cold so none of us would ever know where we really stood with him. And yeah, it got so even negative attention was good attention. Classic battered child syndrome.

“As for the attraction thing? Okay, so you are a beautiful woman, and the whole bad-ass-with-knives thing is a bit of a turn-on for me… but you know, you *know*, I would never have let it get beyond flirting.”

“Rule twelve? Never date a co-worker? Pah. No one actually observes that rule. Not even Gibbs, and it’s his rule. You broke it countless times – with Paula Cassidy, E.J. Barret, and let us not forget Jeanne Benoit…”

Tony’s face grew wooden. “You know why I would never have had sex with you, Ziva. Don’t pretend. Vance spread it far and wide after the Military at Home disaster, when he demanded I get a brand before he tried to get me shipped out Agent Afloat on a carrier. I’m zed, Ziva. And I would never, ever, have taken the risk of outing myself by having sex with you, of all people. Not you, and not any of the others, either. Paula and EJ were good friends. Jeanne… let’s not talk about that. But you especially. You were no shy maiden who would let me keep the lights off, and keep her hands above the waist.”

Ziva sat frozen and staring at her former partner, her face alarmingly pale under the olive cast. She finally swallowed and whispered, “I thought that was just a story… a tale Vance told to save face…”

“Why on Earth would you think that?” Tony sighed and shook his head. “Why are you here, Ziva?”

“When my father was fired from Mossad, he was approached by the IOA for this assignment, to go undercover as a linguist, to be their eyes and ears in Pegasus. They briefed him, and he briefed me… I went through the Atlantis personnel records and found your name… I thought… I’m not certain what I thought! A chance to confront you, to tell you to your face that you had won, to pick up where we left off…”

“With you doing your level best to get me killed? I don’t think so. And you had to know that the second I saw your father, fetching beard or not, that little subterfuge would die a mean death. How did you plan to deal with that?”

Ziva shrugged. “That deception was never meant to last much past our arrival. Once we had a foot in the door, father would have revealed his true identity and his mission for the IOA to the Expedition leadership in any case. I did not trouble my father with the minor fact of you being here. He didn’t find out until we were on the *Daedalus*.” 

“If you stay, you and your father, what are your plans, Ziva?”

“What do you mean?”

“I was advised that it would be best to clear the air with you, make it clear where we both stood. I can’t trust you, I won’t have you at my back or on my team, I will strenuously oppose you serving as back-up for anyone but your father. But. Apart from those terms, I think we can at least work out a truce between us. I can be civil, polite and professional in public. As far as in private goes… there won’t be anything in private between us. Can you say the same? What do you want from me, Ziva?” 

A

Ziva was, once more, at the mercy of a Tony-related head-ache. That waste-of-space class clown frat-boy had given her nothing but trouble from the moment she first heard of him. Their history raced in front of her memories in a moment, much as the old wives tales told of one`s whole history flashing across their eyes at the point of death. 

That god-awful assignment with her half-brother Ari… that still had the power to drive her into paroxysms of anger and grief. Yes, he had been a loose cannon. Yes, he had to be dealt with if he wasn’t to threaten all of Israel with his unreasoning and appalling hatred of their father. But to have to be the one to kill him, herself? That had been hard to bear. The hardest thing she had ever had to do. 

But Ari, it soon appeared, hadn’t been the only one with hidden ‘daddy issues’. If Ari had focused his resentment of Eli on Gibbs, Ziva had similarly focused her trust, and desire for approval. Both of them, made vulnerable to Gibbs to a dangerous degree.

Jenny insisted she could not move Ziva onto the MCRT team without a vacancy being made. Eli needed a hole on the MCRT team. Ari wanted someone on that team, Gibbs’ team, to die. Ziva looked at the files… the answer was obvious, perhaps, to pick the woman, Gibbs’ greatest observable weakness… but Ziva had suggested DiNozzo would be the better target. The SFA. She could go in as second in command of the team. Over a green-as-grass rookie and another woman who was only marginally effective as a profiler, if she couldn’t see how Ari had played her. Easy to fool, easy to supplant.

But Ari had other ideas. 

So she was stuck as junior agent, subordinate, trying to play a man who had seemed, on paper, all too easy to lead around by the dick. So why hadn’t that worked? He suspected her, but of what? He didn’t trust her… and she needed him to at least accept her presence on the team. She tried to work her feminine wiles on him… but beyond a little flirting, more a double-dog-dare-you game of one-upmanship than anything else… She had never failed a honey-pot mission before… why did she fail this time? She soon got a suspicion… it was because Very Special Agent Tony DiNozzo had the hots for his boss. Quite clearly a futile infatuation. But it did explain the friction between them – they both craved Gibbs’ full attention, and the other threatened that. Ziva had no choice but to try and undermine this joke of a man with the team, and with Gibbs.

Thereafter, Ziva lost no opportunity to attempt to black-ball him with the team and the rest of NCIS, even managed to put him in harm’s way any number of times… only to have him ooze out of it, and she had no idea how he did that. It couldn’t be skill, intelligence, talent... she didn’t believe he possessed much of any of those qualities. He could barely hold his own in a fight, and his marksmanship was mediocre at best. She had no idea why Gibbs listened to her, either, rather than his SFA, when she began her campaign of mis-information and subtle criticism. If Tony had tried to warn Gibbs that Ziva was not to be trusted… she had already proved herself to the ex-marine’s total satisfaction, beyond any nebulous words of Tony’s, and he couldn’t possibly have proof, or he would have used it, to threaten her place. 

A house party that deliberately excluded him, a mission where he was made to look bad for claiming an injury was worse than it was (a bullet to the arm that she tricked everyone into believing was a mere scratch), and Tim, a jealous and insecure junior team-member who had long resented being the butt of everyone’s jokes, was now feeling vindicated and supported, elevated to being one of the cool kids. Abby had laughed at the trick, and that put her on Ziva’s side. Any objections Tony made after that sounded like sour grapes… he can dish it out, but he can’t take it? Not even Gibbs would have sympathy for him. After that, it was just a question of… escalating. Running hot and cold, as Tony described it, to keep him off balance and defensive where she was concerned.

Then the explosion that put Gibbs in hospital with a concussion and amnesia, then sent him running to a Mexican beach to lick his wounds… left Tony *nominally* in charge of the MCRT. Ziva had her doubts about that, but when she took them to Jenny, the Director had merely laughed. 

“Don’t you worry, Ziva. I have plans for Tony. By the end of the first month, he’s going to be so ragged from running in a dozen different directions, he won’t know which end is up. I’m putting him on The Frog’s daughter. Honey pot mission. That’ll keep him busy after hours, if he ever has any of those. You just keep the cases moving, and let Tony spin his wheels. And… no need to make it any easier on him.”

That was clearly the end of Tony as a viable threat to her position, or her covert operations in the US, running illegal ops, gathering intel from inside the US military framework with the access Jenny freely gave her. She knew Jenny and her father had a deal, had known it from Ari’s mission, something to do with the gun-runner Benoit, but she was hazy on the details. Not her concern, and she didn’t need to know. 

But then she was framed for murder, and needed someone to trust, not sure if she could trust her own father wasn’t playing her by setting her up… and Gibbs rode to her rescue, trusting her absolutely when she claimed innocence. 

Tony was no threat to anyone but himself at that point.

But Jenny had been sick, and no one knew. The protection detail to LA had been… bad. Ordered to stand down only to have Jenny die, alone, in a shoot out with her enemies… She had arranged it all, to go down fighting rather than withering away in some hospital bed, but it had left Ziva and Tony holding a very ugly bag of blame. Worse yet, without Jenny, Ziva’s whole mission for her father might be uncovered. Whoever took over as Director might just listen to Tony’s suspicions and warnings, where Jenny had covered for her. She needed a way to cling to her position, deflect blame, and the weakest link? Tony. 

The flirting had been a game, and as she began to disregard him as a serious threat, she had let the taunting and come-ons become… fun. A pleasant diversion. He was a very handsome and charming man, after all. He even succeeded in making her laugh upon occasion with his nonsense. Tony had played up to that attraction all along, and apparently, all he had needed was time to get over his trust issues. She had no reason to believe she couldn’t reel him in any time she chose, with the mere crook of her finger. 

Tony had been more affected by Jenny’s death than she realized. So as they waited for clearance to bring Jenny home to DC, Tony had disappeared. Ziva found him in a bar near the beach, drunk out of his skull… It was difficult enough, getting him to the rental car, and slumped into the back seat. He was all but passed out, speaking in slurred mumbles. She drove to an alley, only the smallest bit of stray light from a distant street lamp piercing the gloom… fumbled with his belt and fly, got him ready by touch… 

She wasn’t really sure how aware he was at any time during that. Frequent regular physicals meant she knew he was clean, she knew her own cycles and had no fear of getting pregnant, so there had been no need of a condom, and she needed evidence for a rape kit if the worst should come to worse… 

She was just getting him zipped back up, a soiled tissue discarded out the car door, when both their cells had rung, she hastily answered hers and silenced his… Word from the Navy Yard. The new interim Director would be Leon Vance, her father’s old friend. A quick call to Tel Aviv reassured her that all was well in hand. There was no need for her desperation move after all. 

Getting Tony back to his room was a chore… she needed help from a bellhop to get him out of the car into his hotel room, and he seemed totally unaware of the whole procedure. She left him, fully dressed, if a little disarranged with his shirt pulled out, collapsed on the top of his bed. 

The next morning, as they drove to the airport, Tony was seriously hung over, barely able to keep himself from vomiting in the car, silent, groaning when he made any noise at all. She was sure he had no memory of the night before. 

But the ‘event’ had been brief and impersonal, mechanical, with minimal interaction… Ziva never noticed the second genital opening, or the zed mottling. And she took no precautions, because she knew she was safe enough… *unless* you had unprotected sex with a zed… whose sperm survives in a uterus for a full month, or until the next period.

When Vance ordered her home to Tel Aviv, Ziva fell into a state of shock. Even more devastated when her father endorsed the command and recalled her. But taking the role of new Director of NCIS, Vance could not risk being seen as a man in the back pocket of Eli David. He had to distance himself, for at least a little while, and Eli agreed. She didn’t want to go… she didn’t want to leave the safe haven she felt around Gibbs, a man she had come to see as a second, and far less difficult and demanding, father… 

For once unwilling to blindly follow her father’s orders, Ziva looked first for Tony. She would reveal they had had sex, hope to get him to offer her marriage so she could remain in the US… and not knowing his gender status, had no way to know how futile that plan was. When she finally found him… he was with Gibbs. As in… *with* Gibbs. How bitter a revelation that was. She had thought she was the favorite, the daughter, the trusted confidante… No opportunity, now, even to go to Gibbs, to beg him to help her stay in the US. Next morning, they were all given their orders, barely enough time to pack, the MCRT team broken and scattered.

Back in Israel, under her father’s thumb, she was soon running counter intelligence/counter terrorism black ops once more. Then, she began to notice certain… symptoms. Oh, the shock! Pregnant! The humiliation, if her father should find out… and it had to be Tony. But how… she was too much in a whirl even to guess how that could have come about. It was a fact, and had to be dealt with. She made plans, aped a few PTSD symptoms, and begged extended leave. She fled to the country, to the arms of old friend Dr. Deena Bashan. But when she delivered her daughter, Tali, she was zed! Oh, the horror!

Unlike any of her countrymen or women, Ziva had a long abiding hatred of zeds. Once upon a time, a zed had ruined her family, tore them apart. That… that genetic mutant, Orli Elbaz, the thing that had seduced her father away from his lawful wife and daughters, was one of those degenerate, sex-obsessed, manipulative zeds. Ari’s mother, too, had been a monster zed. Ziva would never, could never, trust a zed. To have given birth to one… It just figured that Tony was tainted with sub-human genetics. She couldn’t accept the child. She just couldn’t. 

Ziva left baby Tali with Deena, and returned to her father. She had been gone a little over seven months. But in that time, many things had changed. Eli had blackmail on Vance, was ready to use it to wedge Ziva back into NCIS. Ziva readily agreed. She was needed back on US soil as handler to her old lover Michael Rivkin, a far more worthy mate for her, to provide back-up, assistance and information for his vital mission. 

The MCRT was finally re-assembled, even Tony brought back from Afloat, in spite of the Director’s protests, but Gibbs was giving his SFA the cold shoulder. He was even more negligible as a risk now, with Vance’s disapproval of his every frat-boy move hovering like a storm-cloud above his too-pretty head. Ziva was giving him the cold shoulder too, not going to talk about any baby, or about a one-night stand he didn’t even remember, and, technically, she supposed… could be counted as a rape. On her part, not his. 

Then the whole Rivkin mess blew up in their faces. Tony’s suspicions were in overdrive, leading him to watch her far too closely… but it was Rivkin he doubted, not necessarily her… she still didn’t take him seriously as a threat, in spite of Michael’s warnings… Until she came home to find Rivkin dying on her floor, at Tony’s hand. 

Tony had come to check up on his partner, at Gibbs’ order, found Rivkin instead, already drunk, and tried to arrest him for the murder of a federal ICE agent. Michael, of course, resisted with extreme prejudice. It should have been Tony bleeding out on her floor. Why wasn’t it Tony? 

Tony the class clown. Tony the joke. Getting the best of Michael, a trained Kidon assassin? How the hell could that have happened! It had to be a trick, a lie, a… a… 

Vance wasn’t a lot of help. He was inclined to be furious at how mis-managed the whole affair was, how it should never have got that far… Ziva should have extracted Rivkin days before, done a better job of covering up his involvement and presence on US soil. To let DiNozzo, of all people, catch them both with their pants down? All he was willing to do was deliver his joke of an agent to Eli David for questioning. And even at that, he was reaching. 

It had all gone to hell from there. Once more, Tony had oozed out of any consequences for his actions. Seething, furious, in a red haze of murderous hatred for that waste-of-space partner who had killed her lover, ruined her life… even more than anyone could know… 

On the tarmac of a Tel Aviv military air base, she had confronted Gibbs head on. She could not believe how stupid that had been… but she had thought… she was his favorite, always, after, maybe, only Abby. She delivered her ultimatum… Tony or me. But Gibbs had been furious too, feeling betrayed that Ziva had chosen Michael, and her father’s order, over coming to him, telling him the truth and asking for his help. With nothing to lose, Ziva tried to work on Gibbs’ jealousy. Cold shoulder or not, Gibbs had been intimate with Tony at least once… Ziva told him that Tony had been jealous of Michael, had deliberately killed him so that he could have Ziva, that the SFA was a loaded cannon and could not be trusted. 

She never knew if Gibbs believed her or not. All she knew was that she was not trusted, either. He left her there on the tarmac, to go home with Tony. That damned frat-boy had won again! How did he keep doing that?

Then Somalia. 

Ziva could hardly bear to remember… the month she spent there… deserted by everyone. Deserted by her father.

Until one day they took the bag off her head… and there was Tony. Ever loyal, ever dependable Tony, come for his partner. Of all the people in the world to come after her… why did it have to be him?

Maybe she wasn’t thinking clearly. Her father certainly doubted her ability to be rational on the subject. But Eli David had left her to rot, when Gibbs had led the team to rescue her. As many people as told her that Tony had moved heaven and earth to find her… she didn’t, couldn’t believe it. It was Gibbs. It had to be all down to Gibbs. *He* had come for her. But she felt the delicate strands tying her to her father break. And, desperate, reached out to Gibbs to tie new ones. 

Become a US citizen. Become a true NCIS agent. Of course, that was the way to go. Deny her whole life up to now, leave all of it behind, including a little girl on a remote farm in the Israeli countryside… and create a new one. 

But… Tony… what to do about Tony. The one true threat to her new life. She knew that now. But she was smart enough, and enough in control of her murderous impulses, not to attack him directly, or to make the same mistake she made in Tel Aviv, by delivering any kind of ultimatum. 

And then her father, her damned father… extended the olive branch, offered her the one thing he *knew*, the bastard, would always bring her to heel… the offer of his approval, his love. And so she was dragged back into the quagmire of deception and covert ops against the country she was about to swear allegiance to… in the teeth of all her well-intentioned promises to Gibbs… 

It started with little things, little failures, that left Tony in danger, one way or another. It was almost subconscious, these little lapses in protocol. More a fleeting wish… What if Tony never came back? What if, running after a perp, he outstripped the rest of them, and had to face an armed criminal alone? What if… what if they cut comms? What if Tony knocked on one door too many, and came face-to-face with a killer? It would be over and done with, no one need know… it was just a joke, a prank, pay-back for Tony’s own juvenile behavior around the office… Tim, still in many ways the green-as-grass insecure and jealous junior agent, was only too glad to join in on the fun… serve Tony right… never seen as a superior, never seen as SFA, Ziva had certainly seen to that over the years of poison dripping in people’s ears… 

Vance might have been an easy sell on that. Gibbs wasn’t. No matter how cold he was to Tony, he could not let such a basic protocol violation go un-questioned. He demanded she answer for herself. 

Ziva claimed it was all lies. Tony made it up to force her to submit to him. She told Gibbs that Tony had been seducing her on and off from the first, harassing her, threatening her, stalking her… Just as he had taken the opportunity to murder her lover in cold blood, and claim self defense. Then she told Gibbs about the baby… Tony’s baby that he would never take responsibility for, conceived the night Jenny died. Which, Ziva knew, though she wasn’t supposed to, was the night before Gibbs himself had sex with Tony. A single picture of toddler Tali… there was no doubt, with that cinnamon colored hair, those green eyes… no doubt whose child she was. That was why Ziva had told Gibbs she could not work with Tony, ever, on the tarmac in Tel Aviv. Yes, she had tried to get over her aversion after Somalia, but… Tony was playing his old games again. 

Ziva knew that jealousy was working through Gibbs like a snake. He would believe her. He would never trust Tony again. She had finally won. 

She was sure of it the next day, when Tony was dragged out of the Navy Yard by former Director Tom Morrow, never to be seen again, his name never mentioned, everyone doing their best to forget all about him. 

Except… you can’t keep a secret like that for long. Somehow, everyone knew about the comms incident. No one would partner her after that. No one would turn their backs on her. They were giving Tim the same treatment… but Tim couldn’t take the weight of Gibbs’ ire, and left the first opportunity Vance offered, even if it was just down to Cyber Crimes, never to be on a field team again.

Ziva held on as long as she could… but… well, as she had just told Tony, too many people spoke against her, and eventually, even Gibbs began to smell the reek of dying fish. It wasn’t as if Ziva had been as careful as she needed to be, to hide her activities from a determined Gibbs. 

And Tony had won the last laugh.

Except… Ziva had one more card to play in their little war. 

A three-year-old female-identified zed whose birth certificate contained a father’s name, but no mother’s. Talia DiNozzo.

Å 

But Tony had asked her, “What do you want from me, Ziva?” 

I want you to lose. I want you in pain. I want you to acknowledge that I’ve won, before you die. And I do want you dead.

“Enough,” spoke the other zed in the room. His caramel-colored eyes seemed to pierce right through her… there were folk tales, of zeds with the Sight… witches… no one believed it, of course… but the cat in his lap was hissing and spitting at her, as if getting ready to attack. Only Dr. Reid’s hand on her back kept the animal from leaping. 

“Ziva David. Who is Tali DiNozzo? Three years old… a female-identified zed?”

Tony stiffened. “Tali? Your sister’s name was Talia. Tali DiNozzo? Ziva… what the hell have you done?” 

A

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is AU, so I made a couple of alterations to canon, for plot reasons. I needed to kill off Teyla’s mate and Torren’s father Kanaan (sorry Kanaan), so he didn’t survive Episode SGA 5-1-Search and Rescue. I also needed to mess with the NCIS time-line a little, so the gap between NCIS 5-19-Judgement Day (Part II) and 6-1-Last Man Standing, rather than just over the summer hiatus, was nine (and a little bit) months, to allow for Tali’s appearance here, rather than after 11-02-Past, Present and Future.


	5. In Name and Blood

Å 

Spencer could feel a monster headache coming on. Maybe the worst of his life. But Bast held him grounded as he probed deeper into this woman’s mind. He had the uneasy suspicion that this might count as assault, of the worst kind… The invasion of another’s mind. And if other zeds could do this… no wonder they had become feared and hated by everyone around them, normal people without the resources to fight them off. But he would have to have that argument with himself later. For right now, when he had felt that tsunami of negative emotion slamming out toward his partner, he could no more fail to intervene than he could stop breathing. 

In an instinctual move, he had thrown out a barrier, like a crash net, catching the battering ram of emotion and with only a little give, holding it off from the intended target, until it dissipated into the air like smoke, still faintly smelling of ash and anger. Then he had followed the trail back, back… and into the seething, boiling cauldron of her mind, in an attempt to turn it off at its source.

Distantly, he could hear the howl of a coyote. Or maybe it was just Luke’s yowl of protest for being abruptly clutched too hard.

But his focus held on the woman before him.

“She’s hidden, in Israel, with a woman named… Dr. Deena Bashan, a family friend.”

Ziva’s horrified eyes turned to him, momentarily distracted from Tony, at least. “Witch…” she whispered. 

Suddenly, the monitors on the wall lit up with pictures of a little girl, surely no more than three years old. One screen showed a brief video of a laughing toddler, cinnamon curls, bright green eyes, dimpled cheeks, delighted to be running naked in a field, at least one gender display bobbing merrily. 

The voice of Atlantis over the ship PA system reported, “These images are stored on Ms David’s communication device. They have now been copied to Agent Tony’s personal files.”

“Oh my god…” Tony gasped. Even Luke in his lap couldn’t seem to stem the tide of emotion within him. “My kid… I have a kid!”

Spencer was inclined to be a little amused by that. “You’ll have two in a few months, Tony. Congratulations. Ms David, I presume you had no intention of ever sharing this information. Then why name the child DiNozzo? Her birth certificate only holds the father’s name. Anthony D. DiNozzo junior. According to Israeli law, that means Tony can take custody at any time. You have given yourself no rights in this situation. Why?” He wanted to think it was for the child’s safety, to protect her from the many enemies Eli David and his daughter had accumulated over the years, now free to come after them and anyone close to them. But, somehow, he didn’t think that was it.

Ziva lashed out, “It’s zed! It’s a damned mutant, an aberration, a tainted, genetic mistake, it should never have been created!”

“But how…” Tony was still gasping. He worked out the timing… “It had to be before I was sent Agent Afloat… Jenny’s protection detail in LA… but we never… we didn’t…”

“You were drunk out of your mind, Tony,” Ziva sneered, taking what satisfaction she could from his confusion and evident pain. “You never remembered the next morning, when we got on the plane to return Jenny’s body to DC.”

Spencer grew even colder. “It was rape. There was no way Tony could have consented to having sex with you, even as… cold and impersonal as that event probably was. You didn’t use a condom. You thought there was no reason to, and every reason to provide as much evidence as possible for any claim of rape *you* intended to make. But you didn’t know he was zed, and zed biology practically guarantees fertility in any unprotected sexual intercourse. Oops. Must have been a nasty shock for you.”

Ziva growled at Tony, “You’ll never have her. A single call, and Deena will take her into hiding. My father will never allow you to take her.”

Spencer stood, able to feel the rush of people coming toward them, as open empathically as he now was. “Does your father even know she exists? You yourself have given us all the legal justification we need, Ms. David. One parent is listed on her birth certificate. Just one. And your communications to Earth are under our control.”

“You have no right!”

“I have every right,” Tony maintained, standing up to meet Teyla’s arms. “I have a daughter, Tey.”

“So I had guessed,” the alien woman smiled fondly, wrapping the shaken man in her arms and kissing him tenderly. “We will welcome Talia with love and joy, my beloved. Just as we will welcome Anthony Jethro.” She placed an intimate hand on his belly…

Finally, the penny dropped for Ziva. “Not fat. Pregnant. Gibbs?”

Tony glared at her. “Gibbs doesn’t want a zed kid any more than you do, Ziva. Go ahead and tell him, if you like. I’ll be sending him a note myself. But he’s never coming here to Atlantis, and after this… I really don’t know what General O’Neill is going to have to say to either you or your father remaining. Oh, by the way… Eli doesn’t know he’s got a grand-daughter?”

The wave of horror at the very thought… for the first time, Spencer was inclined to soften toward the woman who had rejected her own flesh and blood. After what Eli David had done to his own children, forging each and every one into a tool, a weapon for him to wield, to discard the moment they no longer served his purpose… then Spencer realized the truth. It wasn’t what Eli might do to twist another child, it was that he might love this one more. 

Oh yeah, he needed out of this room, soon as. That woman was toxic to him. But right now, he was aware of a wall, an invisible barrier, that he had generated between Tony and David, to keep his Boss from being hit by her emotional vitriol. 

Tony blinked, then glanced at Spencer. “Okay, Probie. We’re all leaving, right now. Ziva, I guess we need to have another meeting… or three… just not right now. Mr. Black, would you mind escorting Ms David back to her father? She might just have a few things to tell him before the shit really hits the fan.”

Edmund had a really impressive shark-like grin. Spencer could easily sense that he would really enjoy eavesdropping on the coming explosion.

Å 

“You okay, Probie?” Tony asked anxiously as they left the *Daedalus* for the cleansing ocean wind blowing on the pier. “You took a hell of a brutal punch, there.”

“What punch?” Ronon demanded, highly aggrieved. “I saw no punch!”

“It was emotional,” Spencer explained, taking large gulps of fresh air and kneeling to touch Bast once more. Their bond was strengthening every time he reached out to her. He wasn’t sure what the cat was getting from the relationship… but he was certainly benefitting in many ways. This time, it allowed him to close down the empathic receptors in his head, to finally shut out the emotional noise around him. “Or maybe psychic. It was this immense wave of negativity I could feel surging out toward Tony.” He looked up at his Boss. “You know she hates, resents and wants to strike out at you, any way she can.”

Tony shrugged. “She’s always been at least a little like that. Another reason I could never trust her. Part of that is on me… I got in the habit back at NCIS of playing whipping boy for my whole team. I would divert Gibbs’ anger and frustration to me with some stupid joke or movie reference… I distracted Kate Todd with sophomoric pranks designed to toughen her up… for an ex-secret service agent, she was had lived a way-too sheltered life to deal with some of the crap we got on a daily basis. She was way too invested in the people we met on cases, taking them all at face value, and wasn’t a good enough profiler to filter out the lies and cons. I let Tim feel superior to me to bolster his own less-than-robust ego… and Ziva? She had this intense need to feel in control. To feel competent and superior to everyone. So I let her see me as she wanted to, a stupid frat-boy who would never be a threat to her, but who could be blamed every time she thought she failed at… whatever. I guess it got to be a habit. With all of them. They stopped seeing behind my masks and tricks… took everything about me at face value. Which I fully encouraged. It’s kind of a reflex, you know? To hide that Mother of All Secrets I was keeping from everyone. And being underestimated is a distinct advantage in the job. But you never expect to have to remind friends and family that there’s more to the story… I got tired of doing that, and just… stopped trying.”

Spencer was finally breathing a little easier, a little less noise in his head, to the point where he felt he could stand without pain. “I… I… intruded, on her mind, in a fairly invasive manner. I’m not sure how I feel about that. I think I was justified, for some of it, because of a perceived danger to you, but… I don’t know what that means for the future, that I can do that. It’s not unlike an Asuran sticking his hand in someone’s skull, uninvited. I think we need more rules, Boss.”

Tony smiled and clapped Spencer on the back. “We’ll work it out. But we’ve had a hell of a day… maybe we’ll be able to work it out in our dreams? I’m going to be busy for a while… you go ahead to dinner… with… Ronon?”

The big man merely nodded. 

Å 

Ronon was called away for some matter involving AR-1 and their next assignment, but Spencer wasn’t left alone for long. He was beginning to suspect there was some sort of a rota in place.

Vala, grin as bright as a sun, slammed her dinner tray down on the table across from Spencer. “I’ve decided you are the only person worth talking to on this boring city,” she announced loudly, no doubt because she knew full well how it would annoy the other diners. Sure enough, the ones in uniform turned to scowl at them from the pointedly separate tables. The ones in lab coats pretended to ignore them altogether, but Spencer could almost see their ears glowing and twisting to eavesdrop on any good fodder for gossip.

Spencer studied her critically. “Daniel turned you down, didn’t he?”

The beautiful woman’s mouth twisted a little, then she turned up the wattage of her smile even more. “He’s got his nose buried in yet another database of Ancient lies, fables and fairy tales. He barely realized I was in his pokey little room. So I left him to it, and serve him right if he dies of starvation.”

Spencer smiled a little. “I could teach him to speed read…?” he offered.

Vala shrugged. “He’d only find more to read. There seems to be an unlimited supply of materials from the Atlantis archives.”

Spencer admitted that was probably true. He considered the other woman, and said, “I’m probably just as bad, as my BAU teammates used to say I could get so focused on an investigation that a bomb blast wouldn’t shake my concentration. It’s because we were both trained from a young age to study in college dorms. Lots of other students, lots of noise and very little opportunity for peace and quiet to study. Even college libraries tended to be loud and boisterous. So you learn to block out everything and focus on your textbooks.”

“But you’re not nearly as bad as My Daniel. You, at least, recognize the need for food and sleep.”

“I’m sure Daniel does, too. But we’ve both also been trained to a certain degree of… situational awareness. In Daniel’s case, Atlantis is a familiar and safe zone, especially for civilian academics, so he can drop his defenses. But it’s all new to me, and… as a known zed, I’m a little more attuned to self-protection when in large groups of people I don’t know, especially when most of them are military. Reminds me uncomfortably of high school… the only zed nerd in school, years younger than anyone else, smaller, and agonizingly vulnerable. Everyone was a potential enemy, and no corner was safe. Any failure of vigilance on my part was…. Punished. To an extreme extent.”

Vala chewed reflectively on whatever local cuisine was being served that day. “Like the only ex-Goa’uld-host on a planet where the Goa’uld were hated and hunted. I know *exactly* what you mean. So right now, do you feel unsafe?”

Spencer shrugged. “To some extent.”

“You don’t see me as a potential enemy, do you?” Vala asked in alarm. 

Spencer grinned at her. “Actually, I’ve noticed that the aliens at the SGC are far more accepting and tolerant of me than any native Terran. Odd, isn’t it? I feel safer with a near-total stranger from another planet?”

Vala looked pointedly at the other diners, the ranks thinning out throughout their conversation. The military had left almost immediately, huffing in offense that they had to breathe the same air as a berd, while the eavesdropping scientists now left with their tails between their legs. So the pair now had the mess to themselves. 

Vala shook her head. “I just don’t get it. And I’ve had any number of people try to explain, and I *still* don’t get it. Why are zeds considered to be so… I don’t know. It’s not fear, not disgust… something in between, or a combination, maybe. And I don’t find anything in you to warrant the disgust. Fear… okay, maybe. Some people certainly ought to be afraid of you, even if they aren’t. I have a feeling you can be a pretty deadly opponent, when you put your mind to it. And since it’s wrapped up in a package that only looks vulnerable… The worst mistake anyone can make is to underestimate an opponent, and you just radiate ‘underestimate me’ vibes. But I just don’t get their attitudes. In no way is it based in reality, as far as I can see.”

Spencer considered this. “I’m the wrong person to ask, Vala. I’ve lived with this prejudice all my life, and I’ve never been able to make sense of it, either. I always felt perfectly human… just like anyone else. I’ve gone through all the usual responses… anger at the injustice of being beaten and rejected for an accident of birth, no different than the color of my skin, or the color of my eyes. That reaction fades with time and habituation… but flares with renewed stimulus. I’m going through an anger wave right now, after Sulfur Springs. Then there’s Doubt, that, maybe, if everyone is so sure I’m sub-human, a genetic mistake, a mutant aberration, that maybe they’re right? I combated that one with research.”

“Ah yes! Your papers. I Googled the top ten articles you’ve written on the statistical analysis with respect to zeds in the Earth and US populations. I’ve read the top three.”

“Which ones?” Spencer asked with interest. “I assume they rank differently day by day, depending on who looks them up.”

“True, but the ones on criminal activity always score in the top five, at least. I’ve read the one on serial killer victimology. How zeds are their training wheels, so to speak. The victims they use to hone their craft, before they get frustrated or bored trying to find the rare zed and start in on the regular population. Then there’s the one on arrests and convictions… how few are ever even charged with crimes against zeds, and how many times a zed is convicted of relatively minor crimes but punished more severely than anyone else, and the death-rate of zed prisoners in jails before their terms are up. That one made me want to go visit the nearest federal prison and engineer a mass break-out. I still might, when I return to Earth.”

Spencer grinned. “And the third?”

Vala met his eyes and said, “The genetic study of the Z chromosome. I don’t know how *anyone* could read that one, and get that zeds were less than human. Your genetics are, in fact, *more* than human, if anything.”

Neither of them wanted to say more in an unsecured location. The bombshell of zed genetics was being treated as a top-secret matter, even within an ultra-top-secret project like Atlantis. However futile that attempt at hiding it was likely to be, long-term.

“I get more criticism for that one than any other paper I’ve ever written. The academic community in particular have written reams of rebuttals. Mostly based on the fact that, while the X and Y chromosomes have been extensively mapped, and even tracked through history, the Z has not. As far as everyone else is concerned, that means I have no scientific justification for making such claims. My own defense is that the mere fact that this is true, that no extra effort has been made to map the Z, and as far as I know, there still isn’t a single lab or grant, civilian, military, government or private sector in any nation on Earth, interested in filling in the blanks, indicates just one more way zeds are discriminated against.”

“Except that Z chromosome has almost twice the number of genes as the X and Y combined.”

“And every living being on Earth carries a very high percentage of what biologists consider ‘junk DNA’, genes which are either inactive or *seem* to have no purpose. For example, retained jellyfish genes from evolutionary ancestors. And technically speaking, the Z positive condition is a trisomy, where a human has 47 chromosomes, instead of 46. Other instances of trisomy are errors in cellular division in an embryo, like Down’s syndrome, which is an extra chromosome on the twenty-first pair that doesn’t exist normally, and interferes with natural fetal development.”

“But… what natural development is interfered with in your case?”

Spencer sighed and shrugged. “According to popular wisdom… reduced intelligence, and various personality disorders related to sexual promiscuity and impaired emotional connections. Such as the inability to control ourselves, conform our sexuality to societal norms, and the inability to feel true love, preferring to seduce any suitable normal male to take care of us. Those are the biggies.” 

“And untrue.”

“Anecdotal at best. Certainly not justified by any objective scientific study or statistical basis I have been able to find.”

“And you’ve looked?”

“One of those articles on your reading list should be the one where I debunk each of Hollywood’s zed clichés by the statistical numbers in legal and governmental databases. I think I called it, ‘Where Hollywood Went Wrong’. Just having the word ‘Hollywood’ in the title usually catches people’s eye.”

Vala grinned and raised a fork in tribute. “I’ll look for that one next, then.” She sighed heavily. “I’ll no doubt have more than enough time for reading.”

Spencer considered her a moment. 

“You should tell him.”

Vala froze for an instant, then relaxed, not even pretending not to understand. “I have tried. He thinks I’m joking, teasing. It’s my own bloody fault, too. Our first two meetings I was doing everything in my power to con him. Trying to steal the *Prometheus* out from under him, then almost got both of us killed trying to get him to lead me to a hidden treasure… now he can’t trust a single bloody thing I say or do.”

“That’s not true, surely? You’ve been on his team for years now. He must trust you as a team-mate, with his life and the lives of his team.”

“With his life? Yes. With his heart? Definitely not.”

“Well… he doesn’t appear to trust anyone else with that, either…”

“You mean Jack.”

Spencer nodded. “I mean Jack. If there’s another person more frustrated than you in this context, it’s him.”

Vala nodded. “Granted. And Jack does have seniority in this particular case. He’s known Daniel longer than anyone. That’s a formidable advantage, one I can’t hope to overcome. And seeing the general spin his wheels every bit as badly as me, is not much comfort.”

Spencer gave his jello cup a stir and contemplated the wiggly gelatin as he put it in his mouth. “I had wondered if the oblivious thing was just an act. A defense mechanism, maybe, to protect himself from making a horrendous mistake that would permanently damage relationships he values far more than his personal gratification.”

Vala regarded him shrewdly. “Meaning?” 

Spencer thought a moment before speaking. “There’s a concept in psychology called a ‘love map’. Humans aren’t born knowing about love and relationships, they have to learn it, build it from example, usually within the first five years of life, but it grows and adjusts according to a person’s life-long experiences. In my work, I mostly encounter what happens when something goes badly wrong with the formation of that ‘love map’. In Daniel’s case, he was born and raised on various archeological digs in Egypt and the Middle East, correct? With many different nationalities, cultures, linguistic influences… it’s why he’s so good with languages. He absorbed them along with the hot desert sun. probably before he could walk. It’s also why he’s so open to others, no matter how different they may seem at first. In archeology, you have a dig team with you, working together on a common goal. It’s no wonder it was so easy for him to conform to a quasi-military team like SG-1. He made you family, like he made the people around him when he was a child. That’s his comfort zone. And being raised in isolated academic communities, and with their anthropological backgrounds, bound to be more open and accepting than the norm… I’m sure he was exposed to any number of permutations and combinations in human sexuality, right from the beginning.”

Vala regarded the profiler thoughtfully. “I have no doubt. Daniel is certainly the most open and accepting person I’ve ever met, on any planet. But I have been warned, by any number of people, that getting romantically involved with another ‘snaky woman’, Goa’uld host or even ex-host, after Sha’re, Sarah Gardner, Hathor… is the last thing he would ever do.”

“And do you agree with that? Is that your observation of him? That he is holding off because of your past?”

Vala chewed on that with her green… something, probably the Pegasus version of a salad. “No,” she finally decided. “If anything, he seems… undecided. Conflicted. About his own heart.”

“Well, he has been hurt before. I know how badly a loss like that of his wife can scar… Once bitten, twice shy, not just a cliché, but a home truth. Yet… he has had a long time to recover… He may be ready to try and open his heart again. But… Perhaps he feels he has to chose. Between two people he cares for greatly. People he considers family, and fears to hurt, or lose, should he attempt to change the parameters of his most precious and stable relationships, only to find his desires are not shared.”

Vala nodded slowly. “I can see that. But what is the answer, then?”

“I’m not sure I understand why he would need to chose. I imagine one of the examples he has internalized from his early ‘love map’ is the possibility of a multiple relationship. In fact, he might even feel more comfortable with that. I’m sure his close ties to his team is a reflection of that, an inclusive extended family.”

Vala blinked, startled. “A threesome?” Then her grin turned evil. “Why, Dr. Reid! How positively kinky of you!” Only then did she sober back up, to give this new concept a good looking at, turning it in her mind. “Hmm… this has definite possibilities. So what you’re really suggesting here, is that I’ve actually been courting the wrong man, all this time.”

Spencer blinked innocently. “I’m not suggesting anything. But in my opinion, as an expert profiler, the general would definitely be the harder nut to crack.”

“I have no doubt. His ‘love map’ strikes me as corn-fed small-town conservative all the way, with a rather large dollop of military DADT. But I’ve also caught him reading the letters section of Penthouse a time or two…” The ex-space pirate’s smile grew more genuine, even as it carried the mischievous sparkling hint of evil. “Oh, this definitely has some possibilities… to seduce a man like Jack… with Daniel there to watch… how wonderfully subversive and delicious that would be!”

Spencer grinned. “I don’t think you’re going to be bored any longer, Madame space pirate.”

“No indeed! And what about you, my little zed angel? Exactly how many are on your string right now? Men and women! I’ve caught at least seven giving you the serious eye.”

Spencer sighed. “I’m not sure… I think Edmund Black is just playing a game. Ronon… I don’t know about him. I have this feeling he belongs to someone else, but maybe he doesn’t know that yet. And Colonel Mitchell…”

Vala cocked an eyebrow at him. “Yes? What about Cam?”

Spencer took another breath, rubbing at his beloved twins. “There are times I really, really, miss my mom. And I wish she could meet Cam.”

Vala chortled. “Take him home to meet the family? That’s practically a declaration of marriage, my dear Dr. Reid. And I happen to know for a fact that Cam’s ‘love map’ is made up of war brides and husbands. So beware of getting taken as a prisoner of war.”

Further talk of an intimate nature was suspended when the British Invasion occurred: Edmund Black and Tony Baldrick leading Mick, Phil and Taylor to the table Spencer and Vala occupied.

“Life is never boring around here, clearly,” Black observed, and proceeded to tell how Ziva David’s announcement to her father had gone. It was told for entertainment value, two people quickly descending into loud Hebrew that sounded like an insult-slinging match… Eli was clearly most displeased with his errant daughter, keeping such an important family secret from him as a grand-child, no matter the gender, or the father. Eli, arrogant, manipulative, controlling and self-serving as he was, had none of his daughter’s bias against zeds, as far as Spencer had seen. Her life choices were going to forge a significant rift between the two, if Spencer was any judge.

Å 

Spencer’s dreams had been remarkably blue-jungle-free since the first one. Maybe, as Blair had said, he needed to be ready for more. Well, after today, he was ready and then some. Blair had also warned him that training was needed to control his burgeoning abilities. If today was any indication, that training couldn’t come too soon for his own peace of mind.

As before, the cats appeared first, Bast already at his side, climbing confidently, possessively even, into his lap, blinking regally (if not smugly) at all the others. Then, under the wheeling alien stars and the alien double moons, came the others, the Furalin.

Only, this time, Blair was with them, a large shaggy gray wolf loping easily at his side. Back beyond the first rank of jungle trees, in another field that circled the glade, paced a huge black panther. It kept a close eye on Blair and his companion, at all times, no matter how distantly it paced. 

Tony appeared, Luke the gangly coyote with the grinning open mouth and lolling tongue at his side. And out in the field, an animal Spencer didn’t recognize greeted the panther, some kind of large, sleek raptor with an impressive wing-span, which soared slowly in circles over the field. Beneath the raptor appeared a huge tiger-like feline, striped in black and green. It touched noses with the panther, and they patrolled together, occasionally checking in with the raptor on reconnaissance, easily forming a team.

Blair and Tony came to sit with Spencer, Luke the orange stripe and Ruth the tortoiseshell climbing up on their humans. Blair and Tony nodded acknowledgement, as if they already knew each other, although Spencer knew they had never met outside this glade.

Blair ginned. “So, you’ve got a sentinel?” he said to Tony, nodding toward the raptor.

Tony grinned. “They’re called Protectors out here. Yeah. Teyla is a particularly strong one. So is Ronon. He’s the green tiger-thing. The panther belong to you?”

“Yeah, that’s my Jim. Ronon… big guy? Caveman-looking? Dreads and knives in his hair?”

Tony laughed. “Yeah, that’s Ronon. I’ve been helping him out. Mostly he can handle himself, he was driven out and hunted in the wilderness for a long time before he was finally rescued… had to learn to control his abilities out there on his own or die… so he finds it more difficult being around people. He’s a little too open sometimes, his danger-sense is dialed up pretty high… I try and get him calmed. He’s waiting for his partner to appear.” Tony gave Spencer a side-long look. 

Spencer shook his head. “No. Sorry. It isn’t me. I’m pretty sure.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he was seeing misty blue shapes trying to coalesce in the glade, and out in the field. Nearby, there was a polar bear, and a stag… but they seemed to be having trouble manifesting. Out in the field, another large bird, an eagle, maybe, was also trying to become more solid.

Blair followed his attention… “Ah. Almost, but not quite yet. You know who they are?”

Spencer was going to deny it automatically… but then… “Anna. I think she’s the bear. That would make it Rodney McKay. So the eagle out there… Colonel Sheppard?”

Tony blinked. “Sheppard’s a Protector? Hunh. I guess there’ve been flashes of that… but if his inner Protector was waiting for Rodney to be ready, he’s only been zed for six months or so, and pretty distracted most of that time… we’ll watch them.”

A confused woman with Oriental features stepped into the glade, and Spencer realized he knew her. It was Dr. Miko Kusanagi, with her black Lucifer morphing into a black-furred fox… with nine tails? 

“Cool!” Blair greeted her. “A Kitsune fox! Neat.”

Spencer searched the glade for other familiars he had already met… “James, the tuxedo cat, attached himself to Dr. Zelenka. Is that a red-tailed hawk? And the gray male tabby, with the red stag alter ego… I don’t know him.”

“That’s Galen,” Tony said. “He haunts the infirmary. Carson named him. Carson’s?”

“I have to assume yes.”

Blair regarded them both. “They’re all at your new post, Spencer? That’s kind of odd, isn’t it? So many zeds in one place? And all kinda emerging as shamans at once? Not to mention so many sentinels! I had enough trouble just finding one, and I searched for years.”

Tony glanced at Spencer. “Not really allowed to talk about it… but I’ve got a strong feeling the people in charge of our project are going to be trying to collect a lot more zeds in future. You should also know… we think there’s a significant danger to all zeds on Earth right now. A certain… criminal element may begin hunting and abducting them, wholesale. So keep your eyes and ears open.”

Out in the sentinel field, there was the sudden roar of a panther, infuriated by danger to his guide. It set up an answering cacophony of howls, shrieks and roars, including the trumpet of… an elephant? Elephant-like, anyway. More and more of the smoky shapes began to collect into identifiable creatures. And all expressed one certain determination: “Not on *my* watch!”

The zed-patterned man appeared then, with his two Pegasus Furalin companions, blinking in some amazement at the crowd of varied spirit animals still gathering in the sentinel field. He gestured to them, then glanced a question at Blair. 

Blair Sandburg snickered. “My sentinel calls it a Harry Potter Patronus convention. He may have a point.”

Spencer wouldn’t have thought an alien would get the pop culture reference… but this one seemed to, and nodded with a smile. 

“So this would be when I say… you’re a wizard, Spencer? And you are a witch, my dear Miko? Regrettably, no. But you are both Furalin, and so I greet you. Hail the Furalin. ”

Spencer stood, gently putting Bast down, and bowed his head. “And I greet you, sir. Hail the Furling.”

Å 

The zed-patterned man smiled. “Ah. You have come far, young Spencer. And you have learned much. Bast has taught you much, you have found your way to impressive control of your abilities, and wielded it with some skill already. Come, children of the Furling, gather and I will try and explain much that has been hidden.”

Å


	6. Legacy

Å 

“The Furling are an ancient race. But we have never been very numerous, slow to grow, rarely mated, with heats only once a cycle, and that cycle is long. And, as adventurous as we are, at least in our youth, that was a bad combination for maintaining a healthy population. But it meant we ranged far and wide, and once we discovered the stargate network, great transportation rings being seeded across the universe by fleets of mysterious automated space-ships… it did not take us long to learn to use them, to explore the galaxies for ourselves. We met three other great races, each with their own peculiarities, strengths and weaknesses… and formed an alliance with them.”

“The Alterans, the Nox and the Asgard,” Spencer supplied.

The zed-patterned man nodded. Then he smirked. “There is no need to continue to call me the zed-patterned man, Spencer. I do have a name… but it is one of your tests, to guess what it might be.”

Spencer frowned. Was this an invitation to… invade another person’s mind? He shied from that, still not sure what he thought of his ability… and the zed-patterned man nodded.

“As you will. But you are correct. We allied first with the Alterans, humanoids with great technological knowledge, but struggling rather with their spiritual sides. They introduced us to the Nox, a charming little people with the gift of living in perfect harmony with the environments around them. No lack of spirituality there, but a certain… disdain, perhaps? For the strictly technological. They tried to open the minds of the Alterans, where they could… with indifferent results. And then there were the Asgard. Of all four, the Asgard were the most fearless, or so we thought at first. It was they who mapped the universe, going everywhere in the greatest of adventures. They absorbed the Alteran technology more easily than Nox balance or Furling spirituality… But they followed a difficult path, when they chose not to procreate by natural means any longer. Each personality would live forever in a succession of clone bodies… or so they believed. None of them need ever die, unless by accident or in war... Of course, no new Asgard would be born, either, but… they did not realize the trap they had built for themselves, and would not listen to the warnings from the Nox or us. We had not realized that death was the one fear they suffered, more than any other. 

“As for ourselves… we were not without our own flaws, fears and weaknesses. One was that the largest part of our population dwelled on one singular home world in the Pegasus Galaxy. And when a natural disaster devastated that world… an extinction level event… 

“Very few of us survived. Never a numerous race, we were now in dire danger of extinction. Our reproductive rate is extremely low… we are sexually active and receptive only once in ten years. At least our cycles coincide… so we are all in heat at one time, but still… we sought sanctuary with the Alterans. With their scientific and medical advancements, they offered many options to us… They had discovered one gene complex within our genome that enabled us to reach out to interface beyond our bodies… our empathic and psionic connection, to other living beings, and even resonant objects, like crystals and naquada.”

“The ATA gene?” Tony asked. “The Alteran Technology Activation gene.”

“It is a complex of genes rather than just one, but yes. It is required to focus and stabilize our inherent empathic abilities. The Alterans found it useful for other reasons. By grafting portions of it into themselves, and designing a psi-sensitive activation crystal into various control panels and devices, they found they could interface mentally with their machinery… a sort of personal lock to keep others from stealing, misusing or turning their devices against them. For whatever reason, we Furlings were not considered a danger. Too few, beginning to be patronized as less advanced because we had no technology at our beck and call… we lived among the Alterans, grateful for their welcome and hospitality, but began to be treated as… I’ll say servants, although an uglier term may not be altogether inaccurate.”

“Slave,” Blair murmured, frowning.

The zed-patterned man shrugged. “However, they did freely offer solutions to our dilemma. One was to create a hybrid being, half Alteran, half Furling, with heat cycles once a year, instead of every ten years. Our Z chromosome would be made able to attach itself to the Alteran XX or XY pairs. Some agreed… and so the Furalin were born. They possessed our dual genders and ATA in their genome, with the empathic abilities and access to the Spirit Plane, but being half Lantean, had the correspondingly more successful reproductive rate. Their great advantage was the ability to interbreed with both Furling and Alteran, spreading also the benefits of the Z chromosome in stabilizing and strengthening DNA structure and replication. 

“Over time… a great deal of time… we grew apart. The true Furling grew numerous enough again to form colonies, returned to Pegasus and found suitable planets to inhabit, no longer limiting ourselves to just one. Most of the Furalin, our children in every way, came with us. Those few Furalin who remained with the Alterans were content enough with their lot as… I believe your term is second-class citizens. We were the first of the Four Great Races to retire from the alliance, satisfied with obscurity. 

“More long stretches of time passed… and the Alterans were struck with a plague. According to the few Nox we spoke to, and our Furalin among them, it was suspected the Alterans had, in their overweening pride, brought it on themselves. Some experiment they had run had gone awry… and hard as they tried, they found no cure for it. The alliance fell apart. Their awesomely advanced science could not save them, but that did not stop them from trying... and some of those attempts turned truly disastrous, further threatening their continued existence. Last of all, they would resort to Ascension… although few of them possessed the spiritual sensitivity to manage such a leap to another plane of existence. It is very hard to release the burden of the flesh. The flesh is inherently seductive, the potential loss of self inherently terrifying… 

“As they had done for us when our home planet of origin was destroyed, we offered them sanctuary in Pegasus among us. Those few still free of the sickness agreed, loaded up their city-ship Atlantis, and journeyed to our galaxy. We welcomed them as kindred. Each of them carried at least a little portion of our genome, and the Furalin among them were certainly our kin.”

The zed-patterned man shook his head. “They could not be content, the Lanteans, as they now called themselves, children of Atlantis. Their minds raced, drove hard to reach further and further. Pegasus was almost empty of sentient life, just the few colonies we had built for ourselves and our Furalin, now wary of all living on one vulnerable world. But the Lanteans terra-formed planet after planet, seeding them with life, many with humans… not quite their children, for they were denied the ATA gene, evolved without it, but… company, I guess. They were fascinated with diversity and variety. 

“They wondered about Ascension, craved the power and knowledge such transformation would give them, such freedom from pain and age and illness and death. They wondered why it was so easy for some, so hard for them. We told them… that it is something an individual must be ready for, and they were not ready. They did not want to hear this answer. And overweening pride was their besetting sin. They found more and more ill-advised ways of trying to force Ascension… each more disastrous than the last. 

“And then they discovered the Iratus Bug.”

“Oh shit…” Tony gasped. “They created the Wraith. We suspected… McKay was almost sure of it… but… *Why*?”

“The Iratus Bug is a creature that feeds on the life energy generated by other living things. It makes them almost unique in the animal kingdom, in any galaxy. They are a hive insect, one Queen capable of reproduction, a cadre of male-sexed drones, and massive numbers of sexless soldiers to forage and collect food and return it to the hive. They build webs to capture prey, or can use them to drop on unsuspecting animals, attach themselves, and begin to drain life-energies from their victim, until it is dead. They can store this energy, return to the hive, and in turn are fed upon by the Queen and drones. 

“The Lanteans believed the iratus were able to access the exact same energy store within that is able to achieve Ascension. The soul, if you will. Or so they thought. If they could find a way to suck it out of themselves and set it free… that would be Ascension. And so they began their experiments. 

“I do not know if it was something they created in their labs, or one too many visits to Iratus planets, perhaps too much contamination from attacks by the bugs… the first Wraith, a hybrid creature somewhere between Iratus and human… just one with a biology stable enough to survive, as countless others were not, was considered worthy of study. It regenerated quickly, only catastrophic damage would truly kill it, and therefore seemed capable of living virtually forever. All of these factors appealed to the Lanteans. 

“There are no records remaining to describe Wraith origins, what lengths the Lanteans may have gone to, to nurture and preserve their Wraith specimen, create more, or what attempts might have been made to... adjust their biology or pander to their nutritional requirements… a sentient being with the ability to suck out a soul, provided they would then release it to the higher planes of existence? That was exactly what they were seeking, surely. But all such records, and there must have been some, the Lantean scientists were far too meticulous in their research not to keep extensive notes and records of every stage… at some point, all data relating to the Wraith was either hidden beyond our ken, or destroyed. But a few Furalin were serving as lab assistants… until, shocked and dismayed at what was happening, still more that their warnings went unheeded, they deserted Atlantis and fled to us.

“The data purge probably occurred soon after the Wraith escaped their pens, wherever they were. And so began a new plague, in our home galaxy.”

Spencer nodded, slowly. “Wraith proliferate quickly, spread like locusts, and… out reproduced the Lanteans. Over centuries, even with all their tech and Atlantis herself, Wraith numbers simply overwhelmed the Lanteans, until they had only one last sanctuary. Atlantis herself.”

The zed-patterned man nodded. “And once again, overweening pride was their besetting sin. Something of a pattern in their behavior, though they would never acknowledge it, or listen to our warnings. Once more, they found more and more ill-advised ways of trying to defeat their determined enemy… each more disastrous than the last, fuelled now, not by scientific fervor or even personal obsessions, but by desperation and terror. Until, finally, even the Lanteans had to admit defeat. They gathered what survivors they could to the city… But their one last stand was merely part of a plan to desert the Pegasus Galaxy to its fate, as fodder for the Wraith, a scourge they created.”

Tony shook his head. “Hunh. That’s cold.”

“Worse, they decided to take as many Furalin as they could with them. In their last remaining ships, they hunted down our colonies, now hidden as best we could so we could escape the Wraith ourselves, and abducted countless of our Furalin children. And when they sank Atlantis to the bottom of the ocean to hide her from the Wraith, still a formidable weapon they did not want to fall into those hostile hands, and opened the Atlantis stargate for Earth, hoping that enough time had passed for the original plague they fled to have died out… they took our children with them.

“But they had made one last alteration to the Furalin children they wanted to serve them in their new home, to bolster their own fast-dwindling numbers. The change made our children universally fertile. Receptive and active all the time, a uterus that would store any sperm until their next egg was ready for conception, and sperm that could survive in even a hostile human uterus until ovulation. 

“But they had not realized that, in the millions of years since they had left Earth, that the planet would have created a second evolution of humans. With numbers still too small for viable independent colonies, they, somewhat reluctantly, were forced to interbreed with us, and even humans. What they had always considered lesser races.

“You, our Furalin descendants, had no such bias. And no such restrictions. But in the myriad combinations that resulted from the mix of humans, Lanteans and Furalin… most human with no ATA and no Z chromosome, Lantean descendants with an ATA but no Z, and some human with a Z chromosome but no ATA gene. What you call Z-positive carriers are unable to express any of the Furalin phenotype, because without the ATA interface, our empathic abilities, encoded on the Z chromosome, are inaccessible, unusable and uncontrollable, and therefore a danger to them, suppressed by nature along with other Furalin attributes. And then there are you, our Furalin children, dual gendered, empathic, fertile beyond our dreams, the future of not just the Furling and Furalin, but all of Pegasus, and all of the universe.”

Spencer blinked, and Tony huffed. “But no pressure,” the Very Special Agent Afloat said, at which Blair stifled a laugh.

Å 

Spencer shook his head. “I guess you must be referring to our empathic powers, our ability to interact telepathically, with humans, cats, other living things. I must presume the rumors of our being able to… counter, the Wraith, are related to this?”

“Only the Wraith Queens can truly be considered telepathic, and their abilities are somewhat limited, to members of their own species. They can commune with other Queens over extreme distances, and direct the thoughts of the drones and soldiers of their own hives within a stellar system. All Wraith have iratus sensitivity to energy fields and are able to distinguish and manipulate these to some extent, as can their biological-based technology. They also have an insect dependence upon pheromones for recognition and communication, used by the Queens for control. Queens and drones have learned to manipulate pheromone markers and energy auras together, to overwhelm and disrupt human emotions. This is how they are able to produce fear-illusions in humans at close quarters, to disorient their prey. And the older Queens are strong enough to actually distinguish human memory imprints carried on the life-energies they feed upon. 

“The Wraith are not nearly as resilient or as adaptable to change as humans. They are totally dependent upon their Queens to direct their actions, and even a Queen must bow before biological imperatives. The Wraith instinctual response to any threat is to spawn in greater numbers, to increase the odds of species survival. That solution is only making their situation worse, this time, rather than better. When then-Major Sheppard awoke the hives, centuries before their hibernation cycle was complete, and therefore long before human populations had recovered enough to support them all, competition for limited resources threw many of the hives into war against each other. Then the Hoffan plague began to spread, causing whole hives to choke and die. The Asuran solution, to eliminate their food source, further stressed the hives, and all the while, the new Lanteans were making significant in-roads, destroying hives, stopping or limiting culling attacks… As a result, Wraith numbers are lower now than at any time since the beginning of their war with the Lanteans, and still, many are at risk of starvation. The Queens all know of Earth, just not its location, and this they are desperate to learn, for only there do they see a possibility for a safe and plentiful food source.”

Blair began to look worried, glancing at Tony and Spencer. “Guys?”

Tony reached out to pat Blair. “Chill, kid. They don’t know where the Milky Way galaxy is, and we’re out here making sure it stays that way. There was an invasion force of super hives that managed to get through a few years ago… it was dealt with.” 

“Not as reassuring as it sounds like it should be, man. But zed-man, you haven’t answered Spencer’s question. Where do we stand, we being zeds, Furalin, whatever, as far as these Wraith are concerned? Because from what you say, it sounds like they have it all their way!”

The zed-patterned man smiled wryly. “Not quite. Telepathy, aura manipulation, pheromone control… none of these abilities work on the Furling, or a trained Furalin. In fact, we are not only able to shield against them, but to reach in and disrupt them within the Wraith. You are easily able to reach into the mind of another, Spencer, as you have found. It is a small step to being able to pierce the mind of a Wraith, and twist it any way you will.

“The Queens know we can do this. This is why they fear and hate us, why they are so determined to hunt us down and kill us all. But they know they cannot approach too close, or they fall to us instead. So they bomb us from orbit.”

Tony, with a wry smirk, quoted, “It’s the only way to be sure.”

“What they have never learned, and would not understand, is that we have access to this plane of existence, the Spirit Plane. And here, we can track them, and, to some extent, influence the Queens from here. We use this ability to… give them an… aversion, shall we say, to certain stellar systems and regions of Pegasus. It is difficult, the empathic and emotional cost to us can be high, but it can be done.”

Tony set his mouth in a grim line… an unusual look on the agent. “And Sateda? Other planets that have been destroyed or people exterminated by the Wraith, culled to extinction? There were millions of people on Sateda. Even the very few survivors suffered horrible fates. Ronon was a Runner, hunted by the Wraith across the galaxy for seven years with a tracker in his back. There were Veralin on Sateda. Why couldn’t you save them?”

“Tony… how many Furling and Furalin do you think there are in Pegasus?”

“I don’t know. You said you have colonies. As in, more than one.”

“Had. Ten thousand years of fighting the Wraith, alone, after the Lanteans stole so many of our children and deserted us… There are twelve Furling right now. Just twelve. We have paired, and each pair takes a colony world, as its main protectors, providing refuge for the Furalin, any chosen human mates, and what humans we can reach in time. And our Furalin have ventured out to some few human populated worlds, in an effort to protect, guide, heal, comfort, where they can. All told, we number three hundred and seven. A Furling pair expends all their time and energy protecting their assigned colony. Our children, the strongest of the Furalin, are trained to track and attempt control of the Queens… but we are too few to control them all. And for some reason we don’t fully understand, we are unable to influence Wraith-worshippers at all. We suspect their addiction to Wraith enzyme is responsible, closing their minds to us. But it means we cannot control their spying against us, either, and so too many of us have been revealed to our enemy and slaughtered.

“We were aware some of you had survived with the Lanteans on Earth, and that some few, like Blair, had awakened enough to their birthright to reach to the Spirit Plane. To have the Atlantis Expedition arrive, find Atlantis and raise her from the deeps… to have them… the only word is ‘explode’ into our ken… we still do not know quite what to make of it all. But to have so many of you returned to us, after so long a time, open to the Spirit Plane and already so adept in so many skills… how can it help but fill us with hope? That our long, and so far futile, war is close to being won?”

Å 

The drilling ring of his alarm clock made Spencer roll over with a groan, slapping at the snooze button. He had a feeling, though, that it would take more than one snooze cycle to get him up out of bed… he felt too hung-over, his sleep too disrupted by the Spirit Plane sojourn, for him to drag himself into the waking world. 

Bast arrived on the bed with a thump, and walked over as much of his blanket-covered body as she possibly could, before collapsing with a huff on his chest, and staring him in the face. It was that patented ‘feed me’ look he had grown to know so well, and had already been trained to obey without hesitation or question. If he delayed even a little, her demand would escalate to chin-nipping and cheek-swatting. With or without bared claws.

“And that’s another thing,” Spencer complained to her. “Not only did the stupid zed-patterned man never tell me his name, or give me a guideline on the ethics of mind-invasion, or, apparently, mind-control, but I never even got to *ask* what the stupid cats are all about.”

Bast gave him a warning glare for the ‘stupid cats’ remark, but forgave all when he hustled to get her bowls filled.

Å 

Because this was Home World Security business, not strictly FBI jurisdiction, Unit Chief Jack Garrett was flown into Tel Aviv on military stand-by. He was met by Lt. Colonel Paul Davis, and after clearing Customs with their diplomatic pouches un-molested, they went to wait in a private room for their official escort. 

Jack had certain… talents he kept well hidden, so he knew even before the HWS colonel passed his odd-looking scanner around, that the room was not being bugged, either by audio or camera surveillance. He would have heard the high-frequency static signals from any such devices. The colonel’s scanner, however… had an element within it that set his teeth twinging, like biting into tin foil. It was really odd, and he had only felt it before when in HWS offices back in DC.

Davis pulled out a sheaf of papers from his briefcase, and glanced through them. “Well, seems as if we’re secure here. That’s a relief. Agent Garrett, I know you’ve been briefed on HWS matters… do you have any questions? About the projects, or this assignment?”

Garrett studied the man. He seemed… a little off. A little too much sweat, heart a little too elevated, eyes evasive… but maybe the uptight Pentagon colonel was just that way, a poker up his butt? Garrett knew he tended to come across that way himself. But in his case, when he was on the job, he was all about the job, and that left no room for personalities to intrude. So although he might have quipped that, hell yeah, he had questions, about aliens, spaceships, exploring other planets, and the *Lost City of Atlantis*, for christ’s sake… but he kept his eyes on the prize. 

“Seems pretty clear-cut. Custody and protection for a minor, child of an American national, whose welfare may be in doubt.” The pictures included with his briefing packet had shown an adorable three-year-old cherub with laughing green eyes and cinnamon curls, and he could feel his entire being clench with fury at just the idea she might be threatened in some way. He took a careful deep breath and managed to release that reaction. Not needed. Not yet, at any rate, although all of his instincts were running hot in anticipation that this might change without warning. “They told me you’d have all the paperwork, signed sealed and delivered.”

“I do. Do you know any of the… participants?”

“I think everyone dealing with international law enforcement matters has heard of the David family. Pretty high profile, CI/CT and Mossad connections, recent falling out due to an espionage scandal on US soil… And I talked to FBI SAC Tobias Fornell, who knows DiNozzo and the David woman personally. If he was shocked by anything, it was that DiNozzo would allow David near him with a barge pole. Ever.”

Davis sighed, and Garrett could almost hear him thinking, “Would a zed even care, as long as he got some?”

“Colonel Davis? You have some issue with DiNozzo?” Like, rampant anti-zed bias? For some reason, especially after the Sulfur Springs case blew up, Jack was getting pretty damned intolerant of the zed-haters out there. 

Davis sighed again, relaxing minutely. “If I did, Dr. Spencer Reid talked me out of it. That man is… relentless. He’s been bombing me with articles, research papers and database searches since I met him.”

That startled Jack into a laugh. “Yeah, he is kind of an irresistible force when he gets going, isn’t he?”

Davis looked even easier, and certainly happier. So maybe Jack had mis-read him, and the man merely regretted past attitudes. The colonel asked, “You know him?”

“Worked with him and the BAU team on a number of cases. Kid’s far and away the most brilliant person I’ve ever met.” He shook his head, still enraged over the way events had played out. “It’s a damned shame… losing him is going to be devastating for us, and I don’t mean just the BAU or FBI. Maybe all of us.”

Davis nodded thoughtfully. “But…” he offered tentatively, “he’s still on the job, where he is now. And believe me, that can only be a good thing.”

“We can only hope.”

A knock on the door, and a woman entered, wearing a dark power suit and business-like manner, but with some kind of taut emotion underneath. She was ageless in her classic beauty, as some women are, evidently middle-aged but carrying it well. And Jack could smell it on her… zed. He stood at once and offered to shake hands. 

“I am Orli Elbaz, acting-Director of Mossad,” she offered.

“Jack Garrett, FBI unit chief of the International Response Team, but acting on this occasion for Home World. I believe we’ve met, Director. A case brought the IRT to Tel Aviv about a year ago.”

“Yes, I remember vividly, Agent Garrett. We were most grateful for your team’s assistance. And you are Lt. Colonel Davis, I assume?”

“Yes ma’am,” Davis agreed guardedly. “Acting Director?”

“My ties to the former Director are considered to be… rather too close for the comfort of some, as we are still cleaning house after his dismissal. And it is quite true that I am an old friend of the family. Hence the reason I volunteered to escort you to Dr. Bashan. If you will come with me, gentlemen? I have secured us a car and driver for the trip. It is going to be a lengthy one. But Dr. Bashan has informed me that she has guest rooms for us to spend the night before returning in the morning. So, if you will?”

Å 

The trip was about three hours, but comfortable, thanks to a limo with spacious passenger seats, full-blast air conditioning, and a sound-proof (and probably bullet-proof) glass between the passengers and the front driver seats. Both Davis and Elbaz spent most of it fielding cell-phone calls, each dealing with their own brands of grass-fires. Elbaz spoke mostly in Hebrew, obviously not caring that the two Americans were able to overhear. Jack didn’t think any of it was all that classified, just annoying administrivia, as her superiors must be reserving judgment on her loyalty and suitability for her position. Which didn’t stop her subordinates from bombarding her with payroll, office supply and petty protocol issues. As for Davis, his blood pressure kept rising the more polite he was forced to be to IOA members deluging him with whining demands for explanations of something his superiors must have done.

Jack considered suggesting that they swap cell phones, and each deal with the other’s problems… and that notion kept him amused well enough for the trip. Still, he was glad he brought along the latest Tom Clancy.

They stopped for a short break in a small dusty town, to gas up and buy bottled water. Jack looked around… let his extraordinary senses off their leash. And he immediately detected cause for concern. The faintest whiff of thermite on the air. As their driver filled the gas tank and both Davis and Elbaz perused the small shop attached to the gas station for snacks and drinks, Jack took a meander around the hot, dry desert yard. The strongest trace was in a garbage can out back, and some brown paper wrapping and twine dropped into the bin. It was fresh… the cellophane from a single sandwich and peel from a single orange all that had fallen on top. Might have all been discarded at the same time.

Cautiously looking around, Jack pulled out the relevant pieces of trash, and gave it a thorough run through his own private forensics lab. The crumbs on the cellophane had dried, but were no more than a few hours old. The peelings hadn’t darkened yet. They wore gloves for the paper, didn’t bother with the sandwich or orange… there was GSW on the paper, too, and the unmistakable tell-tale of copper and iron… blood… transfer from the gloves. That probably meant at least one body in the wake of this mess. There was no value to bagging or preserving the evidence… evidence of what, with no physical connection to any crime?

He was nowhere near naïve enough to believe this was coincidence. Time they got to the farm-house where little Talia DiNozzo was all too vulnerable.

The driver was still busy, so Jack went into the trunk and got his weapon out of his go-bag. Coming out of the shop, Davis immediately caught the movement, and went instantly on alert. Jack didn’t peg him for a field asset, but he was impressively quick to pick up the hint, and prepare himself, checking his own holstered weapon, so not a complete liability… Then Elbaz stepped into the Israeli sun… and yeah, she was field-trained to the bone, but he already knew that. She had at least two loaded fire arms and more than one knife on her person, had no need to check any of them were ready for instant action. Exchanging just one quick glance with Jack, she hustled her driver (Jack knew he was also armed, sure he also served as security), and they were all on their way in minutes… with Elbaz suggesting they ignore any local speed restrictions. 

Once they were seated and on their way, Elbaz finally asked for explanations.

“Agent Garrett?”

“Someone has a thermite device. They were at the station two, maybe three hours ago. What are the chances they have other business around here?”

Elbaz grimaced. “Not good.” She got on her phone, but evidently, back-up was too far out, even with helicopters. With a rap on the glass, she warned the driver to beware of IEDs, anything that even hinted at a road-side bomb. 

Davis had better luck. “Sir. Sorry to get you out of bed, I know it’s late in Colorado, but we may have trouble on the DiNozzo pick-up. Thermite detected around the nearest whistle-stop town… yes sir… yes sir… let you know sir.” He turned to his companions. “We’re checking it out.”

“Whoever it was had gun shot residue and traces of blood on them. They’ve killed, recently,” Garrett supplied. 

Davis might have given him a brief, hard look… then nodded, not even bothering to ask how he could know that. Elbaz had met him before, and probably had already made her own guesses about him, because she betrayed no surprise or doubts at all. 

His information got both Elbaz and Davis back on the line to their contacts. Elbaz was almost frantic, Jack could hear the stress in her voice, impressively controlled in spite of that as she took her people to task for not notifying her of a theft of explosive materials from a nearby military base just that morning, and resulting loss of life – two guards, shot dead. With frustration, she said, “My itinerary for today was not especially secret. Let us hope this is just an attempt on my life, and not something worse.”

Jack smiled, reassured that she obviously meant that. The little angel with green eyes was important to her, too. 

“You trust the driver?”

“As much as anyone, yes. He’s been with me for years.”

“No one in my chain of command has any reason to think I’m doing anything more than routine field visits for the IRT.”

They both turned to Davis, and he looked disgruntled, more than anything. “We suspect the IOA, the International Oversight Agency overseeing HWS operations, has a mole. I beamed in from one of our ships in orbit, but they’ve been calling me all morning… my cell has state of the art security, but it also has… well, our version of GPS, and the IOA board members all have top level access. They’d know where I am, if they were interested, or suspected something was up.”

Garrett nodded. “So there might be a party waiting for us.”

But they were now only ten minutes out from a quiet, isolated farm. 

Å 

Regimented rows of fruit trees stood in the orchards filling the valley, irrigation ditches carrying water to them. Out buildings spotted the landscape: silos for storage, piles of empty wooden crates standing ready to fill with produce, sheds for heavy equipment, bunk houses for itinerant workers. At this time of year, Elbaz explained, little would be going on but spraying the trees and maintaining the water levels, so there were minimal numbers of workers present. The Bashan family had maintained the lucrative property and business for generations, but only the daughter, Deena, a medical doctor, was currently in residence. 

From Garrett’s point of view, there were far too many places for enemies to take cover. He had to hope the alien tech scanners Davis’ people could bring to bear would alert them to any danger. There had been plenty of time for someone to plant a bomb. Or even set one off, depending upon the desired effect.

Davis recommended driving straight up to the house, however. 

Standing guard at the corners and on the porch were soldiers in desert BDUs, heavily armed, alert and ready. 

Jack Garrett took just a moment as he got out of the limo to assess his surroundings. He could hear the echoing whispers from ear buds, as someone reported the area clear, gave heading and distance for the source of thermite, and reported three ‘bogies’ on the property, hiding in one of the sheds. His own senses told him as much. The ‘bogies’ were hunkered down, relaxed, waiting. No doubt they thought they would have opportunity after dark to plant their bomb, the presence of visitors, soldiers and security no more than an inconvenient blip to their plan. Whatever it might be.

Davis greeted the solider in charge, ‘Reynolds’ by his name plate. His uniform bore no other tags, pins or patches to identify branch, rank or unit.

“Kevin. You got them?”

“Hey, Paul. Yeah, we’re going to zat ‘em and secure the device, then beam all three straight to holding. I’m afraid we scared the lady, though, when we got her and the kid secured and inside.”

“You going to stick around?”

“Hell yeah. Until you have the kid safe in the Mountain. Chegwidden is furious. If he doesn’t get to fry someone over this, he’s going to be a very unhappy man. You know, with Daniel and Vala out of the galaxy, I thought we’d have it easy for a little while… but Mitchell claims DiNozzo is almost as bad. Looks like his kid takes after him in more than looks.”

Garrett stepped up to join the two men, raising an eyebrow in query. Reynolds grinned. “Trouble magnets. We got a lot of ‘em at the SGC. Dr. Daniel Jackson is the prime, no question, but it looks like Agent DiNozzo is bucking for number two. Betting at the Mountain, Cheyenne Mountain, was that Dr. Reid was going to win that distinction. Me, I’m thinking… no.”

Garrett shook his head. “That’s a sucker’s bet. You don’t know Reid.”

Reynolds shook hands. “Agent Garrett? Colonel Kevin Reynolds, SG-3 team lead. Good to meet you, sir. That was an outstanding call on the thermite… good catch. Know you’ve been called in for special assignment, in case we find something hinky is going on with zeds. No way to tell yet if this is because of zeds, Mossad, DiNozzo, or the David family fall-out… but if you need to call again, me and my team will probably get the tap.”

“Good to know, Colonel. You have no problem with zeds?”

“Agent, I deal with aliens day in and day out. Naked sexless clones, big stinky lizards, people with snakes in their heads, balls of energy that look like lit-up squids… dealing with home-grown humans… not a problem, believe me. And you don’t want to know what Daniel would do to anyone he caught bad-mouthing *anyone*. There’s currently a swear-jar at the Mountain, you gotta pay a dollar every time you forget to call dual-gendered folks zed, instead of anything else. Proceeds to go to that new UN-sponsored charity for promoting zed rights.”

Garrett relaxed and could even smile. “Also good to know. Thanks.”

Reynolds turned to the Mossad acting Director. “Ma’am? We’ll make a full after-action report to you about the situation… I don’t know who’ll end up with the prisoners, that’s way above my pay grade, maybe above yours too, but we will certainly keep you in the loop.”

“Thank you, Colonel. Now I really think we should go and set Deena Bashan’s mind at rest, don’t you?”

“Yes ma’am.” The SG-3 team lead bowed out of the way, and Elbaz was first through the screen door and into the dark and cooler interior of the farmhouse. Davis and then Garrett followed close behind. 

“Orli? What’s going on? Who are all these people?” demanded a woman with raven black hair, black eyes and olive complexion. There was a redness to those large luminous eyes that suggested she’d been crying. Jack didn’t think it was about the bomb scare, or foreign soldiers over-running her property. “They said there was a credible threat to me and Tali… whatever that means! What threat?”

“Hush, Deena. All is well. We were informed of a possible danger to you and Tali, but these men are here to make sure nothing comes of it. Now, this is Colonel Paul Davis from the US Pentagon, and this is Unit Chief Jack Garrett of the FBI. I know Agent Garrett personally, and have absolute trust in him. He is a good man, devoted to justice, and the protection of the innocent. I want you to know that. Now… are you calm? Will you show us inside where we can sit and talk?”

A sudden burst of sadness over-rode the woman’s more urgent concerns, now that they had been allayed. She studied the two men. 

“Come,” she said, and showed them to a sitting room. Fans kept the air moving pleasantly. Jack noted that there was a large-screen TV with a DVD player in the corner. They would need that soon. “Can I get you anything? Coffee? Water?”

All three denied needing anything. 

“Dr. Bashan,” Jack began. “I know this is difficult, for you, for Talia, for everyone. But all we really want, all of us, is the best thing for Talia. Right?”

Bashan dropped her head, and nodded, her lips clamped tight on the emotions almost over-whelming her. She took several deep breaths, then collected herself. “I knew this day would come. I’ve known since before she was born. I tried to prepare myself, but…”

“But you’ve been her mother since her birth,” Jack offered gently. “I understand. I have kids myself. It’s not about blood. It’s about love. I think… I’m sure Agent DiNozzo knows that, too. He couldn’t come himself, his base is far too remote, but he sent you a DVD message. He wanted me to play it for you. He also said… he said if I thought you were the proper person to keep Tali, that he wouldn’t fight you for custody, he’d even sign whatever papers needed to make it legal. His only stipulation is that Ziva David, and Eli David, never get custody.”

Orli Elbaz cringed a little at that, on the inside. Resigned, recognizing the necessity, but it still hurt her.

Deena slowly nodded. “I understand. And I know why he has said this. He’s right. And that is why I must give Tali up… because I cannot keep her out of their hands. And theirs are the wrong hands.”

“May I play the DVD message?” 

“Yes, of course.”

Jack looked at the others. “Agent DiNozzo said he didn’t mind who heard it. It’s the truth, and he’s not ashamed of expressing his feelings on this matter.”

Jack loaded up the player and the message began to play.

Å 

Tony sat before the camera with Teyla at his side, holding his hand. Torren was off to one side, holding Rodney McKay by one hand, John Sheppard by the other. He wanted a chance to speak, and Tony agreed. This was about family, after all. 

“Dr. Bashan, I’m Tony, Anthony Dominic DiNozzo junior. I was a teammate of Ziva’s at NCIS for five years, on and off. I know you’re a childhood friend of Ziva’s, she talked about you from time to time, how she and you and her sister Talia would play and go to ballet lessons… those memories are really important to her. It sounds like you all had a wonderful childhood together. 

“But I guess you know, Ziva’s life took a bit of a turn… I wish I could say she and I were lovers, or even just good friends, but the truth is, we weren’t much more than partners, and often not even that. In fact, I’m pretty sure she hates me, so where this came from… I have no idea. When I found out, *yesterday*, that I have a daughter… it threw me for a loop. I never knew. I remember being drunk out of my mind that night, I had just lost someone I thought of as a good friend… well, it was a bad time. I don’t even remember Ziva, or anyone else, being anywhere near me that night.

“Whatever reasons she may have had, she never meant for me to find out, I know. But I did… and now, here we are. 

“I have to be frank. I know you’re her friend, and a pretty damn good one, because you helped her, to have the baby, to take it in and raise Tali as your own… I saw the pictures and the video, and I can tell, Tali is healthy and happy and loved… and the last thing I want to do is take away a child you probably think of as your own… but I gotta be honest with you. I don’t think Tali is safe. Not anywhere Ziva, or Eli, can get at her. 

“Eli David doesn’t raise kids, he forges weapons. I don’t think either one of us want that for Tali. The David family have dedicated enough soldiers to the cause. Eli, his wife, Talia, Ziva, even Ari… I don’t think Tali needs to be another. I hope that doesn’t offend you… it’s just the way I feel. As for Ziva herself…

“I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how much you’re aware, of just how much she resents and hates me, and how much she hates all zeds. And Tali is one, and represents the other. I don’t think that’s a good thing. I don’t know how much contact Ziva has with her own daughter… I can’t imagine it’s often. But you’d know that better than I. I mean… she did keep the pictures and video you sent on her phone… so, I don’t know. Maybe I’m way off base here, letting my own… contentious relationship with Ziva color my assumptions. I want to think that putting only my name on her birth certificate was a way to protect Tali from the David family enemies… but I think we both know there was something else going on there. 

“As for me… you’ll want to know Tali is going someplace safe. I’m afraid I can’t guarantee that. You and I both know that security is an illusion. What I can guarantee is that, if you agree to give her up, she’s coming to a family that will love and cherish her, and want only the best for her. I… I love her already, Dr. Bashan. Just that little clip, of her running in the field…” Tony chuckled, and had to wipe tears from his eyes. 

The auburn-haired woman at his side smiled fondly at him, the light of love in light-colored almond-shaped eyes. “Dr. Bashan, I am Teyla Emmagan. Tony and I are mated. We will be married, after the customs of my people, once our little Anthony Jethro is born. You see, Tony is what we call Veralin… a people we venerate and respect. Your people know them as zed, but I am aware that there are many places where they are neither respected nor venerated.” She patted lovingly at Tony’s belly, and now it was obvious he was round with pregnancy. “It is about love, not blood. I love Tony, and I love his children. As I will love AJ as if he were my own, so will I love Talia.” With a wink to Tony, she offered, “Her name even sounds Athosian.”

Torren, hopping and impatient, called out from the side, “Is it my turn now?”

“Sure, sport. Come on in,” Tony offered with a grin. And the little boy rushed to his parents. 

“Hi, Dr. Bashan! Are you a science-ist like Dr. Rodney, or a healer doctor like Dr. Carson? My momma is Teyla, but my papa died when I was born. I miss him, though, even if I was too little to mumember. But Papa Tony is here now, and we have lots of fun together, he teaches me basketball and football, well, until I get too bambunctions, and I have to take a time-out… My new brother is going to take a long time to grow up till he can play with me, and I wanted a sister too, so it’s like you made me a gift! Tali can walk and play already, right? I promise to be careful though, and not play too rough… she’s little and a Veralin, so we have to protect her. I’ll be good at that, I promise. I’ll be the bestest brother of all! And we’ll send you lots of pictures and messages like this and stuff, so you know she’s happy with us, and she will be, I’ll make sure, that’s my job as big brother. Pleasepleaseplease, let her come live with us? *Please*?”

Somehow, the little guy with the dark red hair and almond-shaped eyes got all of that out in one breath. It was a mystery of nature. 

“Okay okay, buddy, that’s enough,” Tony reined him in with a laugh. Then, with one arm around Torren and another around Teyla, he sobered and faced the camera once more. “We’re family, Dr. Bashan. We’re ready to include Tali, if you’ll let us. And Torren’s right. We’ll include you as family, too. Aunt Deena. No matter what you decide, I hope we can at least trade pictures and news… keep the lines of communication open. Our base is pretty remote, as I said, but we’ll try and keep in touch as best we can. 

“I guess… I guess that’s all I can say in my own defense. She’s my daughter. I love her, every bit as much as I’m sure you do. 

“DiNozzo family, signing off.”

The message froze on the last shot, of Tony and his little family, linked together, smiling hopefully into the camera.

Å 

Even the starched-up Colonel Davis had to hide a few tears after that. Garrett smirked at him. But Orli Elbaz was sitting next to Dr. Bashan on the sofa, an arm around her shaking shoulders.

Dr. Bashan managed to say through a constricted throat, “If Ziva had *ever* shown one tiny bit of interest, I might have fought to kept Tali… on even the off-chance she would realize what a horrible mistake she’s making… but Agent DiNozzo, Tony… is right. Ziva has never wanted any part of Tali. And I actually fear for the consequences if Eli David should claim her. 

“I have no doubts at all… not now. Not after that. You will be able to ensure her safety until she is in her father’s hands?”

“I give you my promise,” Jack Garrett said. 

Orli Elbaz said gently, “I believe you have made the best choice, Deena. For Tali’s sake. He seems like a good man. And as for your own safety... I think it would be best if you came with me, back to Tel Aviv. Just for a little while, until we can be sure you are safe.”

Dr. Bashan merely nodded, trying to hide her tears. “I will go pack, and send Tali in to you.”

“Let me help,” Jack offered.

“As you will.” 

Å 

A large, sunny, bright room at the back of the house was set up as a play room, all windows, now open to the faintest of breezes, but still, a little on the hot side for Jack’s taste, as he was wearing a suit jacket and tie. 

On the floor sat little Tali DiNozzo, quite still, staring into the eyes of a calico cat, half its face black, the other half caramel colored, with eyes the exact same green as the little girl’s. Jack grinned. 

“Tali? There is someone here to meet you. This is Agent Garrett. He is here to take you on a trip.”

Jack knelt down to get close to Tali’s level. “Who’s your friend?” he asked.

When Tali ignored everything but the cat, Deena huffed a laugh and said, “It’s just one of the barn cats, keeps sneaking in when my back is turned.”

Jack glanced at the animal… and found it looking back at him. 

For a moment… a long moment… Jack was almost sure… he heard it in his head. Suddenly, his senses became sharpened acutely, strengthening, without the tight-rope balancing act he usually had to do when dialed up so high and away from his wife… As if he could sense every bug, lizard and mammal for miles, smell each individual fruit on every tree, still tart as they grew to ripeness… and all the people… the sweating soldiers and the cordite of their guns, one he could hear kneeling by the incendiary bomb, finally defusing it with a huff of relief and an abruptly lowered heart-rate, then a shouted ‘All clear!’

Then the moment was gone, his senses folded back to normal alert levels. The cat’s purr remained steady, and it lifted a paw for Tali to take. 

“She’s Oma.”

“She is, hunh? Is she coming with us?”

“She says yes.”

“Okay then. Let’s get her ready to go.”

Å


	7. Compromising Positions

Å 

With a dozen new, fully charged ZPMs, the gift from the Asurans, opening the Stargate between galaxies was no longer such an issue, although no one was willing to waste energy that might be needed later. Four of the zero point modules had been sent to the SGC, one for the Weapons Chair, one for SGC operations, and two for a newly commissioned ships with Asgard cores, the *Gaia* and the *Perseus*. The new protocols called for the gate to be opened between Atlantis and Earth once a week, taking turns, in the normal run of things. 

As anxious as Agent DiNozzo had been to rush home and collect his daughter himself, he had, with some resistance, been talked out of it. Spencer assured him that he could trust Jack Garrett to bring Tali safely to Colorado. Tony had wanted the chance to talk to Deena Bashan himself, in person… no one liked that idea, not even Teyla. *Especially* not Teyla. Once she had heard about his last adventure in Israel, she put her foot down, pulled rank and said a flat no. The David family had too many tentacles everywhere in the Middle East, reminding Teyla rather too unpleasantly of the Genii, zed security on Earth was a fluctuating and uncertain thing… Just no. If Dr. Bashan decided to make custody difficult, then they could review the situation, but Teyla would not allow Tony to risk one child for the sake of another, if it wasn’t necessary. 

Å 

Luckily, the transfer of custody for one Talia DiNozzo went smoothly… amazingly so for an international issue of child welfare, at least from legal, citizenship and travel perspectives. But three-year-old Tali had not understood what was happening, was terribly upset to be torn from her ‘Auntie Deena’, and cried in Jack Garrett’s arms as they were beamed from the Bashan orchard to a spaceship in orbit, then back down to the SGC. The little girl only calmed into sniffles and pathetically wet eyes when re-united with her calico cat Oma, a creature that seemed unusually devoted and loyal for a feline, especially one that was ostensibly a feral barn cat… 

Acting Director AJ Chegwidden knelt before the child and grinned. “Oh my. Hello, Talia DiNozzo. You know, you look *exactly* like your daddy? I’d know you for Tony’s daughter anywhere.”

That seemed to catch the toddler’s attention. One more sniff, unbearably cute, and every hard-assed soldier around her melted, even Jack Garrett hiding a grin. “My aba? You know my aba?”

“I do indeed. Would you like to go meet him?”

Taking a huge gulp of air and a hiccup, she nodded enthusiastically, curls bobbing around her head. 

“See that great big ring there? Just watch.” Chegwidden gave a hand signal, and the dialing sequence began. The child’s mouth dropped open in amazement, and everyone watched her delighted amazement, momentarily startled when the blue geyser of water-like energy roared out, then settled into a dappled blue pool of light. She gasped, then laughed with joy, clapping her hands. 

Jack Garrett had to shut his eyes and take a moment to breathe and settle his own senses. That thing, the stargate… just about blew him wide open with its unprecedented explosion of stimulus, sight, sound, ozone smell, every nerve in his body shuddering when stray energy waves hit them and fled quickly by. And that tooth-twinging feeling was back with a vengeance, never before so strong as this. 

The opening of the Stargate was distraction enough for everyone… So he might have been the only person in the gate room to notice that, of all of them, the calmest and least affected, was the damn cat.

Taking advantage of the open wormhole to Pegasus, the SGC was sending through some troops, scientist personnel, supplies in crates… Jack caught the fleeting glimpse of another two small shadows, whisking themselves into hiding among bales and boxes… and the two suitcases Deena Bashan had packed up of Tali’s belongings.

A woman in SGC fatigues with medic badge and pins, introduced herself as Nurse Betty, then took the little girl from Jack, and walked up to the wormhole. Tali turned in her hold and waved shyly back at Jack and Chegwidden as she disappeared, cat following placidly behind, its black, white and caramel striped tail straight up in the air.

“Oh yeah,” Chegwidden chuckled. “She’s a DiNozzo, all right. Little heart-breaker. Good work, Agent Garrett. And… outstanding call on the thermite. I won’t ask you how you detected it…” and the older man gave him a bland look, “just glad that you did. We’ve got three bogies in cells up on the *Apollo*, waiting for interrogation. I’ve asked Aaron Hotchner and his team to take lead, but I wondered if you might like to assist? Seems like this might be something you guys will have to collaborate on in future, anyway. Depending on how bad this zed situation might get, we’ll probably have to pull in more help. Problem is…”

“Who can you trust to take it seriously, and deal with it effectively,” Jack guessed. 

“Oh yeah. That would be it. Not just who is or isn’t prejudiced against zeds, but… who might or might not be in the pocket of the very people we want to hog-tie.”

Garrett gave another look around the gate room before he followed Chegwidden out. Now that he was at least somewhat acclimatized to the alien transportation device and able to tune beyond it, he could smell at least a dozen cats within a few floors of the stargate. Most were attached to a zed… and there seemed to be quite a lot of them at the facility, as well. As far as Jack knew, zeds preferred *not* to congregate together. Especially on military bases, and as integrated as the SGC was with civilian consultants, it was still primarily a military base. 

“I couldn’t help but notice… you got a lot of cats around here.”

“Yeah. You noticed that too, hunh? I’m handling the situation by ignoring it. For now. Cats? What cats? You brought one with you from Israel.”

“Oma. Tali said she wanted to come. I wasn’t going to argue.”

“Ah. Tali is zed.”

“Yeah. That mean something to you?”

“Zeds and cats… it’s a thing. Watch, you’ll see what I mean.”

Å 

Jack wasn’t sure how he felt about the whole… beaming thing. It sure was an improvement on conventional air travel, even by private jet, you can’t argue with instantaneous translocation… but it felt… unnatural to his enhanced senses, and ruffled his perceptions… to be suddenly somewhere else. The second and third times bothered him less, though, so maybe he just needed to get used to it, know what to expect. Same as with that annoying tingle in his teeth, everywhere the SGC had a foot-hold. Once on the *Apollo* Bridge, he nodded to the captain, Colonel Abe Ellis, and was escorted to the assigned interrogation observation room. 

Aaron Hotchner and the BAU were already there, setting up, even their tech goddess, Penelope Garcia, somewhat giddy, still, at being in orbit. On a space ship. 

Aaron and Jack shook hands. “Hey, Aaron.”

“Jack. Good call on the thermite,” Aaron said, with a lifted eyebrow. “Usually I have to send Morgan in to get intel like that.” If someone wanted to believe that was because of Morgan’s background in bomb disposal at the Chicago PD, they were free to do so.

Yeah, Derek Morgan was the BAU ‘blood-hound’. A number of the elite FBI teams had at least one, never officially acknowledged, of course. And it was an *extremely* well-kept secret that, on those teams that had one, they tended to work an order of magnitude better if there was also a Z positive, or better yet, a hidden zed on the team as well. 

Jack gave Morgan a glance. He looked a little ragged around the edges. “You doing okay there, Morgan?”

Dr. Tara Lewis stepped closer to the big man, putting a steadying hand on his shoulder, and it did seem to significantly help. Morgan gave Jack a thin smile. “Doing better. Just getting used to being without Reid. It ain’t easy. For any of us.”

Jack nodded in understanding. 

Garcia, meanwhile, had got the monitors on the holding cells up and running. 

Jack blinked at one in particular. “Is that… is that Trent Kort? CIA?”

“The one and only,” Rossi agreed in a jaundiced tone. “Ex-CIA now, of course. They won’t admit he has anything to do with them. Disavowed.”

“What happened to the eye?”

“Long story,” Aaron said, “and apparently not our business, because they wouldn’t tell me. Probably something embarrassing to Langley, possibly why they cut him loose. They had no information they were willing to share on what he’s been doing, or for whom, since he left them.”

“Of course not,” Jack grumbled sourly.

“All they would say is that he has history with DiNozzo and the David family. And that’s only because Chegwidden already knew some of it and briefed us. Seems late NCIS Director Jennifer Shepard was running an unsanctioned undercover op into an arms dealer named Rene Benoit…”

“Ah. Heard a bit about that. Benoit ended up dead, under suspicious circumstances. They arrested DiNozzo, but cut him loose almost immediately. Scuttlebutt says Shepard was responsible.”

“Probably. But her op? She set DiNozzo on Benoit’s daughter, trolling for whatever intel she might have on the father’s movements, which apparently wasn’t much. DiNozzo wasn’t told it was unsanctioned, balked at playing the honey pot, but he was being set up as bait for Benoit. It went bad fast when Benoit showed up in DC. He’d rolled over and become a CIA asset in return for… considerations, with Kort as his handler. As soon as Kort realized NCIS was too close to his asset, he moved to try and take DiNozzo out. Bomb in his car. Missed its target, took out a bodyguard instead.”

“Jesus…”

“Yeah. No love lost between DiNozzo and Kort. Kort and the MCRT team tangled on a couple of other cases over the years… NCIS mostly won.”

“And his history with the David family?”

“Tangential with the daughter, but he and Eli have traded favors and intel for years.”

“So… what were he and his buddies doing with a bomb on a farm in Israel?”

Rossi grinned. “Why don’t we go and ask him that? Just FYI, we don’t know who his buddies are. Human, that’s all we’re sure of right now, and I feel weird even saying that. Running facial rec now, but we suspect chances are good they’re both from… ‘out of town’. Oh, by the way, we haven’t told any of them where they are, and they were unconscious for the beam up. We thought it would be interesting to see who knew what that they shouldn’t.”

Å 

SFs cautiously wrangled the ex-CIA operative into the interrogation room, and secured him to a seat that was bolted to the metal floor… restraints more than simple handcuffs, with an electronic lock that would have to be activated remotely. His reputation preceded him, and no one was taking chances. 

Rossi and Garrett sauntered in together, supplied with laptops, rather than the standard manila-colored file folders. Once connected with ports in the table, they were able to access the monitors in this room, or Garcia could supply input from the control room. 

Garrett sat back and let Dave Rossi work. His talents easily told him who was lying, but it took an expert profiler to determine the whys and intuit where that might lead, and no one could beat Rossi in that area… except, maybe, Reid. Even Morgan tended to rely a little too heavily on the senses, although he was becoming a lot better at the profiler skills. 

“Hey there, Kort. Long time no see.”

“Rossi. You’re a little off your normal bailiwick, aren’t you?” Garrett could scent it… fear, and an elevated temperature. The ex-CIA agent didn’t like Rossi being here. 

The Italian smiled affably. “Hey, when I heard you were involved in this goat-rope, I just *had* to get myself an invitation to the party. I hear you were getting ready to bomb a defenseless farmhouse with a woman and a little kid inside. I know you guys operate with a… flexible set of morals, but a three-year-old kid? Come on! What’s up with that?”

Garrett caught the flinch. Rossi did too, no matter how fleeting.

“What’s it going to take to get me out of here?” Kort demanded. The impatience and bored demeanor were fronts for a rising level of panic. It didn’t take a talent like his to tell that.

“Oh… nothing. Because when we’re done with you, no doubt the Israelis will want a shot. And without your buddy Eli at the helm, I don’t give you much of a hope there. Your bomb could have taken out their new interim Mossad Director. She is not amused.”

Kort studied Rossi closely. “Even when no action was actually taken?”

“You were caught in possession of a bomb, primed, set and ready to be planted, big enough to blow the whole house to match-sticks. Obvious intent. And then there was the mess you made of the base where you stole the explosives. Two guards dead. Gun shot residue on your clothes and the gloves in your pocket. Weapon tucked in your belt, one of four on your person, all being tested for ballistics right now. You know how the Israelis are about terrorists, and the Bashan family have a lot of influence. The woman you were set to blow up is a prominent doctor. Not to mention a three-year-old baby! What do you have to bargain with? Not much, far as I can see.”

“Then why bother to question me at all?”

Rossi shrugged. “Right now? We only want to know the intended target. So we know who to protect from more little incidents like this. At the moment, we don’t know if you were after personal revenge against Agent DiNozzo, taking out an innocent little girl he didn’t even know existed a few days ago… or if this was some kind of strike against the Davids, your former pal Eli or his daughter, funded by one of their many enemies now that they’re on the outs and presumably fair game… or if this is part of a larger picture… one surrounding zeds.”

Ouch! Kort practically jumped out of his chair at that one. Although he had reacted to DiNozzo’s name, anger then smugness, and the Davids definitely pushed a button for wariness… it was the mention of zeds that made Kort almost panic in his seat. Garrett could smell the trace of urine leaking... and that was astounding, considering how experienced and well-trained the man before them was, said to have nerves of steel. 

Rossi lifted an eyebrow. “Oh really? Zeds? Do tell.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sure you do, Trent. Don’t insult my intelligence.”

Kort banged his manacled wrists on the table as he surged forward, chin out-thrust. “Then I want a deal. Immunity. An escape route. I grass on these guys and they’ll kill me, and that’s nothing to what Eli David will do when he finds out.”

Rossi thought it over. “What kind of escape route?”

Kort smirked, looking around. “Transport. To another planet. With a stargate. I’ll find my own way from there.”

Rossi blinked. “Okay, you know way more than you should. Who told you?”

“My employers don’t subscribe to any official secrets act. What they told me is common knowledge where they come from. You want them, I can give them to you. But I want a deal.”

Rossi glanced at Garrett, then admitted, “That’s going to have to come from higher up the food chain than me, Kort. But I’ll see what I can do… in exchange for a few more freebies. What exactly was the plan here, anyway? Even if your employers want zeds… Talia DiNozzo is only three fucking years old. What good is she to anyone?”

Kort collapsed back in the chair, looking, and what is more feeling, defeated. He would get his deal, he knew that… no sense in holding back now. If he ever had a conscience about this kind of mission, it had long been burned out of him. 

“Eli called me before he left for… his latest assignment. He told me about a little girl on the Bashan orchard farm. His grand-daughter. He wanted her secured, taken somewhere safe and secret, but no clues left behind as to what happened to her. I agreed. I planned to get her out of the house, then bomb it, killing the woman and anyone else on the premises, so no alarm or amber alerts would be raised.”

“Nice plan,” Rossi grumbled. “For a hefty price, I’ll bet.”

“Hey, it was his grand-daughter. But then the next day, I was approached by another… concern. They told me… they showed me… Eli had something they wanted. I don’t know what. But they knew about the kid, and they needed leverage on him. I was to go through with Eli’s job, with one small amendment. They wanted Talia DiNozzo turned over to them, instead. They saddled me with two of their own operatives to keep me honest. It was them, the trigger-happy morons, who shot up the guards at the base, I had to take their guns away from them before they totally screwed the op altogether. I could have got the damn thermite elsewhere. Not like it’s hard to come by for someone with my connections.”

“And when a limo full of people showed up? And a squad of soldiers?” 

Kort snorted. “Please. A minor complication, no more. As long as they didn’t take the brat away there and then. We were waiting for nightfall in any case. I can evade guards and effect a silent entry in my sleep. And it isn’t as if we were bothered about collateral damage… the number of dead from the bomb was immaterial, as long as we got the kid. The bomb would eliminate any traces and no one would know they were missing one body.”

The ex-CIA man oozed arrogant assurance, and faith in his skills. Garrett thought he was probably justified in that… but he had a sudden image… of a calico cat with shrewd green eyes, waiting in the darkness under a window sill for a heavy tread to land square on her tail… to scream out a warning that would wake the dead for miles around.

“What, was I going to say no? After what I learned? These guys are way out of my league, Eli’s league, everyone’s league. And… they want zeds. Any zeds. All zeds. I don’t know why. Really, Rossi, I don’t know why. But they want them bad, and they’re not willing to wait.”

Rossi and Garrett rejoined the rest of the BAU soon after. AJ Chegwidden would have to negotiate whatever deal was going to be offered after this. But the dangling plum of breaking the Lucian Alliance and Trust operations on Earth… that was a damn big plum. 

“Any zeds. All zeds,” Derek Morgan almost growled, echoing what Garrett himself was feeling, a rising tidal wave of anger and outrage: not on *my* watch! Tara again laid a steadying hand on his shoulder, but it only focused the profiler’s ire. 

“Is it wrong of me to be glad Pretty Boy is in another galaxy right now?”

Å 

Spencer had managed quite well to get the holding, interrogation and observation systems arranged in a satisfactory fashion, with help from Atlantis herself. For a few of the finer adjustments he had to call Dr. McKay for assistance, who had sent Dr. Evgenia Andreeva, rather to his relief. Spencer got on well with Evgenia, but had yet to make a connection to the irascible and prickly Canadian.

Tony had taken the morning to bond with his new daughter and family, and get everyone settled. Teyla insisted setting a normal routine was the best way to go, so after lunch and some play time with both Tali and Torren, he kissed everyone good bye, and joined his new Probie. 

After studying the set-up, he nodded approval. “Wow! Good job, Probie. Dr Andreeva? Thanks for the help.”

“Any time, my dears. It was an interesting problem, connecting systems for surveillance, recording, translation, transcription to written reports and entry to your database set-up for cross indexing, key word and search parameters. Ingenious.”

Spencer grinned. “Atlantis suggested most of it, when I explained what my BAU tech analyst Penelope Garcia could do with a few commands of SQL. I hope she gets to visit soon, so I can show her this. The resulting squeal of delight will deafen half the population.”

Tony chuckled as Dr. Evgenia packed up her tools. “Your Penelope sounds like someone I used to know. Bye for now, Doc.” She waved and left the two agents to their work.

“Okay then. Does our shiny new system have a name?”

Spencer blushed. “Actually… I call her Garcia.”

Tony grinned. “Fair enough. Watcha got, Garcia?”

The female voice replied jauntily, “Presuming you are referring to the prisoners in holding right now, I have noted all interactions are minimal. All but the man presently known to us only as Timur Shelyapin show extreme levels of submission to the Goa’uld Kherty. His name derives from an ancient Egyptian god of many names, known also as the Great Potter. Resembling a human with a ram’s head, he was worshipped on Earth in ancient times in Hypselis, Esna, Antinoe and Elephantine. Rams were a symbol of fertility. The ram was sacred to Khnum, another of Kherty’s names, the god who created men on his pottery wheel. The implication I take from this is that the pilots who survived the destruction of the ha’tak are all of minor rank, and probably have least information to give us. Kherty is one connection to the Lucian Alliance leadership, although whether he ranks that high himself is doubtful, given that Timur Shelyapin shows him no respect. Shelyapin is the more important source, as he is the connection between the Lucian Alliance and their foothold operations on Earth. I suggest questioning Kherty first, for enough background to give us leverage on Shelyapin, to use for more valuable intelligence.”

Tony grinned at Spencer. “Wow. Garcia could put us both out of a job, Probie. Good work, Garcia. I’ve got a couple ideas how to crack these nuts open. Let me brief you both…”

Å 

‘Holding’ was yet another bright and spacious suite of rooms, lower down in one of the outer towers. A central lobby contained a control pedestal, and there was a circle of bays around it, set up for individual cells, and one main… Spencer was thinking of it as the ‘drunk tank’. Each cell contained a pop-up unit for toilet and washing facilities, a bench that doubled as sleeping cot, a force shield across the entrance that could be made to allow a single occupant out, and could be modulated: opaque from the inside, like a one-way mirror, or to suppress sound travelling inside. (Force shields… so cool.) Atlantis had also provided wheeled chairs for any guards, or, in this case, interrogators. 

Their smugglers, Master Sergeant Donnetti and his senior airman, the two Atlantis airmen aiding and abetting as part of the ring, had already been sent back to Earth, into the custody of the special JAG prosecutor, to be tried along with their SGC accomplice. Which just left their Lucian Alliance guests. 

The drunk tank held their seven Lucian Alliance prisoners with room to spare. Shelyapin sprawled on one cot, deliberately ignoring the others. ‘Lord Kherty’ sat in offended dignity on another cot, while the jaffa, the one with the black tattoo on his forehead, seemed half-asleep. The last four, humans, were all bored and not handling it well, pacing, fidgeting, or trying to operate the simple game toys provided by Atlantis to keep them amused.

As soon as Tony and Spencer entered, all seven prisoners perked up. While none of them had been willing to freely offer information of any kind, here, at last, was distraction from their days of boredom.

Kherty immediately stood up and demanded, “I require sustenance. Why have I not been fed?”

Tony regarded him curiously. “Hm. Interesting. You’re a hostile enemy who attacked our one and only supply ship and wanted to take over our city. Why do you think we would bother to feed you?”

Kherty smirked, unbearably smug. “You Tau’ri have laws about such. Fair treatment of prisoners. The Geneva Convention, I believe it is called.”

“Oh, really? You know about that? Who told you?”

Kherty nodded dismissively to Shelyapin. “This one mentioned it. But I already knew, from my host.”

Spencer observed, “I thought ‘nothing of the host remains’ when you take control?” But he also logged the information that the host was probably from Earth, possibly even an SG team member currently MIA. Dr. Keller was already preparing to remove the symbiote, which would likely occur later that afternoon.

Kherty gave him a foul look… then blinked and speculated, “You are one with the Ancient Legacy.”

“How about you answer our questions, Lord Kherty?” Tony prompted, settling himself in one of the supplied chairs. “You were in contact with the Lucian spy on the *Daedalus*, Mr. Shelyapin here?”

Kherty put his nose in the air. “I will answer no questions.”

Tony shrugged. “What about the rest of you? You’re all screwed, you know. Piracy, attacking a Tau’ri ship… I’m not sure how you Lucians treat any prisoners you take, but I imagine failing in your mission to take the *Daedalus* and Atlantis won’t make your former masters very happy with you… even if you ever get back to them.”

The humans eyed each other nervously, but Mr. Jaffa was being very stoic, backing up his ‘Lord’. Shelyapin rested back on his cot, pretending not to notice anything but the inside of his own eyelids. 

“No takers? Better treatment for anyone who talks to us, of their own free will. Maybe even a late lunch. No? Okay, fine.”

Tony gave a heavy sigh, even as Sheppard appeared, geared up for a mission. 

“So. You done with these guys yet?” Sheppard asked.

Tony nodded. “Yeah. They’re standing mute.”

“Okay then. We’ll take ‘em with us. All but the Goa’uld… Keller’s almost ready for him. P4G 891 has a space gate. Abandoned, no resident population, so no Hoffan plague… just hope the Wraith don’t realize there are uninfected humans there. Far as we know, it hasn’t had a Wraith visit in a while… not since we started using it for hunting, and, you know, to dump unwanted guests. There’s a whole continent for them to run around in, and… oh, about fifty three rogue Genii and other assorted riffraff to make friends with. Hope they got hunting talents.”

Shelyapin slowly sat up, studying them all suspiciously. “What are you planning to do?”

Spencer looked conflicted. “You’re not suggesting stranding them on an alien planet, are you?” 

Tony and John smirked at each other. Tony supplied, “Well, unless their lawyers show up to object, but… oh, that’s right, they’re not from Earth, so they have no lawyers. Geneva Convention says we can’t torture them, have to put them somewhere similar to the habitat where we took them, which, in this case, is deep space… they should feel lucky we’re parking them on Botany Bay, with air, water, game…”

“And potential Wraith attack!” Spencer argued, looking more worried. This was nothing to the consternation on their prisoners, who had all dipped into the monitors for what few files Atlantis allowed them to view… including that of the Wraith and their victims.

“Come on, Probie. They’re pirates. Shelyapin is worse, murderer, saboteur, spy. They aren’t going to talk to us… and presently, with our one supply line damaged, the *Daedalus* sitting on the east pier since *that* guy deliberately bombed it, we’re under Amber Rationing. Hence Sheppard’s hunting expedition. We can’t keep them here and not feed them, now can we? And we sure as hell can’t let them loose anywhere they could make trouble for us or anyone else. So we ship ‘em out, somewhere where they can at least feed themselves.”

“But… why can’t we feed them?”

“Amber Rationing. Didn’t you catch that file? Without a certain supply chain, only half-rations for Atlantis personnel and any allies and designated refugees, until the state of emergency ends. Which won’t be until we get more food, arms and medical supply shipments, and a deep space carrier that isn’t sitting in pieces in dry-dock. These guys don’t qualify for rations. Unless you want to give up your own? No, didn’t think so. By the way, because you and I are in… a delicate condition, we get full rations, along with kids and medical cases. I’m eating for two, you’re eating for three. Lucky us.”

“But…” Spencer twisted his hands, looking even more upset.

“Look, we give ‘em a knife, flint, some rope and a blanket. The rest is up to them. Exercise, fresh air, no pollution… it’s practically a tropical holiday! Just without the beach and mai tais. Okay, Sheppard. They’re all yours.”

Kherty might be worried about the coming procedure he was facing, but he was sublimely indifferent to the plight of his subordinates, or Shelyapin. 

The mock Russian might still be suspicious he was being played, but… risk-taker that he was, this was one risk too many.

“Stop! What if I should prove useful to you? Supply you with information? Would that earn me a share of rations, here on Atlantis?”

Sheppard looked bored and impatient, checking his watch. “I gotta go in ten. Next hunting mission isn’t for two more days, and that’s only going to make them too weak to hunt. Unless… that’s what you want? So... He coming with me or not?” 

“I will be very useful,” Shelyapin promised. And then the four humans and one jaffa were also clamoring for deals.

Å 

As it turned out, Kherty’s host was indeed from Earth… but not part of the SGC, ever. He had been NID at some point, until he agreed to assist Colonel Harry Maybourne raid alien allies for high tech items. When then-Colonel Jack O’Neill had infiltrated and exposed their off-world operation, Agent Larry Stiller had been on a mission with his team. Captured and implanted with a minor Goa’uld, Stiller hadn’t been quite the coup the Goa’uld Cronus had been hoping for, with extensive knowledge of Earth defenses. All Stiller knew was the rogue operation, and the second stargate on Earth, and even that information was obsolete by the time Cronus caught him.

But Kherty (not necessarily Stiller) was a survivor, who had rolled with the punches as the Goa’uld all fell around him. Finally washing up with the Lucian Alliance, his familiarity with Earth made him of value in coaching their own infiltration units, working with the remnants of the Trust, who also knew of Stiller. But with a symbiote, it wasn’t smart of him to spend extended visits to the Tau’ri himself, to which his Lucian masters agreed.

Stiller freely volunteered everything he knew about the structure and leadership of the Lucian Alliance as it now stood, as well as several bases and projects of intense interest. 

Å 

“They’ve got a *what*?!” Jack O’Neill demanded, aghast over the comm system when Tony & Spencer called in to report from the NCIS office.

Spencer and Tony exchanged glances. Yeah, this was bad. 

“They found a fully operational Ancient shipworks in the Milky Way galaxy, complete with Weapons platform,” Spencer supplied. “There was perhaps half a dozen ships there in various stages of completion. But as no one among the Lucians have an ATA…”

“They couldn’t turn any of it on. Well, shit. No wonder they’re so hot for ATA gene carriers.”

“The various Lucian leaders carved up their find…” Tony explained. “None of them trusted the rest enough to leave it all where they found it. So you have seven space mafia families out there with high-tech Ancient toys, all scheming to be the first on the block with advanced Ancient tech that actually works for them. Kherty’s immediate bosses got cut out of the feeding frenzy, which is why they sent him to try and bag them a Tau’ri ship… and Atlantis.”

“And our buddy Timur? Where does he fit in all this? Didn’t you say you didn’t think he was part of Kherty’s command chain?”

Spencer said, “He profiles as a lot higher up the rankings than he’s told us so far. Maybe not one of the Masters, but at least a lieutenant. We think he was in charge of a lot of the Lucian activity on Earth, one of the main liaisons with the Trust organization. He… seems to believe that we’ll send him back to Earth, and that he has contacts there willing and able to rescue him. He won’t want to give any of that away, no matter what tricks we pull on him. It’s his ticket to eventual freedom. He only gave us what he already has in order to stall us stranding him out of reach of his contact network.”

Jack groaned, shaking his head. “A weapons platform and six partially-completed Ancient ships. Christ. I need a drink… oh, DiNozzo, I sent you a transcript of the stuff the FBI teams got out of that bomber they found at the Bashan estate. Eli hired himself a mercenary to go fetch his grand-daughter. Apparently you know him. One-eyed ex-CIA agent named Trent Kort.”

Å


	8. Mixed Signals

Å 

The sudden flood of fury from his Boss took Spencer completely by surprise. Tony was out of his chair and racing to the office door almost before Spencer could blink, and choke out an urgent order to Atlantis, “Lock the door!”

Tony howled in anger as he bashed at the door with his hands, then whirled on Spencer, fire in his eyes, hands clenched into fists. Spencer was dead white as he reached… 

“Don’t you dare!” Tony demanded. 

But Spencer did. “Sleep.” 

Slowly, fighting all the way, Tony slowly crumpled to the floor. 

Luke stared at his partner, then at Spencer, then at Tony… then took one step toward Spencer, but Bast hissed out a warning, and the big orange tom halted, blinking. 

Who to call? AR-1 had actually gone on a mission to one of the Asuran addresses, so Teyla wasn’t an option, and Spencer couldn’t think of anyone else who had even a chance of containing a furious Tony when he awakened, or could be trusted with two vulnerable zeds in distress. 

But then… “Vala!” he called into his comm device. “Please, come to the NCIS office, fast as you can!”

The epic headache Spencer was fighting, even as he struggled to keep Tony down… 

With a desperate hand grabbing at Bast, he did something he had never done when awake. He put one hand on Tony, and then shut his eyes tight, and reached…

Å 

Tony stood panting with suppressed emotions in the center of the blue jungle glade, his coyote at his side snarling with hackles raised… But the big canine wasn’t stupid enough to challenge the cougar facing him.

Tony on the other hand, took one step forward, and swung a fist straight at Spencer’s chin. 

The profiler took it, not even attempting to dodge or turn away. Amber eyes stricken, he just stood there, waiting for another blow. 

“I’m sorry,” was all he could say. “I’m so sorry. But I couldn’t let you leave like that.”

“You… you… you put me to sleep!”

“I know.” Spencer nodded, but now that Tony was actually focused on him, instead of his murderous impulses… Spencer straightened, and his chin, even now blossoming with spirit-plane bruising, which he realized probably looked a lot like zed mottling, began to jut in stubborn defiance. “I had to stop you from doing something you would regret.”

“Who says I’d regret it? That son of a bitch needs to get *dead*! He hired Trent *fucking* Kort to steal my daughter! Trent *fucking* Kort who tried to blow me up! Who doesn’t give a damn about collateral damage and never has! Who can’t be trusted further than I can throw a rhinoceros! Who would have killed poor Deena Bashan as easily as he would step on a flea, and all that poor woman ever did was take in a baby abandoned by Eli *fucking* David’s own daughter! And Eli *fucking* David would have been responsible! He *needs* to get dead!”

“Yes,” Spencer nodded in complete agreement. “He does. But not by you, and not now. You were going to kill that man as soon as you saw him. You would violate the rule of law, your duty, your responsibility. I know why, I know you were thinking of a higher calling, to protect your child from a real and immediate threat, but… It would have been revenge. Pure and simple and *wrong*. There are other ways of handling it. Legal ways. The right ways. You don’t even have all the facts yet, because you haven’t seen the interrogation transcript. And what kind of second would I be if I let you go off like that without even *trying* to stop you?”

Tony stiffened, chest still heaving, eyes still overly bright and face suffused with anger and offense. But he finally turned his head to stare at his companion coyote.

“Stay here for a little while,” Spencer recommended, and it was really more of an order. “Cool down. Start your brain in gear instead of your emotions. And when you wake up… we’ll talk about this. Any disciplinary action you want to take, I’ll accept without question. But you have to start thinking clearly, first.”

With that, he let go of Bast, and…

Å 

Spencer had collapsed onto the floor right by Tony. Vala was kneeling by them both, with Cameron, Daniel and Teal’c all standing nearby, anxious and bewildered. 

“What the hell happened?” Cam demanded. 

Spencer struggled to get up, holding up a hand for Vala to stay where she was, while Teal’c stepped up to hoist Spencer to his feet. 

“Garcia, show me the interrogation transcript for one Trent Kort, just sent through to us on data burst.”

“At once, Dr. Reid.”

One wall displayed the formal report from Earth, interrogation by David Rossi and Jack Garrett of one Trent Kort, under arrest for several counts of murder, conspiracy to bomb and attempted kidnapping.

Spencer and SG-1 all read the report in silence. It included profiling notes from both FBI agents, and some background on the prisoner’s past history with the other involved parties, the David family, and agent DiNozzo. 

“Holy hell…” Cam whistled. He glanced down at the agent afloat still crumpled on the floor. “He go off the rails?”

“Just a little bit,” Spencer confessed. He was beginning to shake with post-adrenaline rush jitters… maybe even a bit of shock.

“How did you stop him?” the big jaffa asked curiously. He had not come into much contact with the profiler before this, but nothing he had heard indicated the weedy young man would be a physical match for the scrappy and much larger NCIS agent, especially when DiNozzo was obviously (and understandably) in the grip of strong emotions.

“I… I…” Spencer tried to say it, and… just couldn’t. He didn’t think it was a good thing to confess before he had confronted Tony again. “I… rendered him unconscious. He’ll wake up in a little bit… But I’m not sure what mood he’ll be in.”

“Should we get him to the infirmary?” Daniel asked. 

“No,” Spencer said with certainty. “He needs to be here, in our office… surrounded by the rule of law and his duties and responsibilities to our work.” Spencer glanced up at the report on the wall. “And… I think I need to get some clarification from Mr. David. We were not aware before this that he even knew Tali existed. Since Agent DiNozzo is clearly too close to this issue… I think it needs to be me.”

“Clarification?” Vala asked. “You think… You think Eli David asked this Kort person to set the bomb. Or knew he would kill Dr. Bashan in order to get away with the baby.”

“I think,” Spencer said, weariness dragging on every part of him, “that Atlantis needs its first restraining orders, to keep Tony and Eli David from every being within sight of each other. Atlantis? Until further notice, I need an alert whenever those two are even in the same section of the city. And on no account allow them to transport to the other’s orbit without me present.”

“Agreed, Dr. Reid.”

Still feeling wobbly, Spencer drew back from Teal’c’s rock-steady support, took a breath and said, “I’ll be right back. Vala, can you keep him here for me?”

Vala frowned. “You don’t go alone, Spencer.”

“Hell no!” Cam agreed. “I’ll back you up, Dr. Reid.”

Spencer nodded. Teal’c also trailed behind, leaving Daniel to assist Vala. Spencer wasn’t sure why the jaffa was along, he seemed more curious than anything, watching the zed closely.

A

Once again, they were in the *Daedalus* mess hall, Eli and his daughter seated at a table, both silent and staring out at the city, SFs a discrete distance away.

Spencer took a seat at the Davids’ table, and Cameron sat beside him. Spencer didn’t even attempt to argue with the colonel. Teal’c, meanwhile, stood at parade rest behind Spencer’s chair, looking intimidating. Not that either of the Davids paid him much attention. They ignored everyone else in their introspection.

“Ziva, Mr. David, I have a few things to tell you. First, we sent a team to take custody of Talia DiNozzo, and bring her safely here to the city. She is now in the legal custody of her father.”

That at least got their attention trained directly on him. Ziva’s face flickered with a succession of emotions, quickly tamped down behind an impressive poker face. But Spencer was not prepared to stand back and allow any more secrets. He had already so ruptured his own personal morals and ethics, that… one more violation was nothing to him. Not in this case, at least. And Ziva had settled into a grudging mood of… relief. Her lightning quick glance to her father was even a little bit smug. 

But then, she didn’t yet know the full story. If anyone was going to throttle Eli David’s throat in an excess of anger, better it be his daughter. Spencer wasn’t necessarily proud of that thought, but it had a satisfying justice to it. These two deserved each other.

Eli, on the other hand… his poker face, also impressive, masked a miasma of anger, fear, wariness… he desperately wondered what the hell had gone wrong with his carefully built plans.

“This was accomplished this morning. The team that was sent to extract the child also uncovered a plot by several… parties, to kidnap Talia, bomb the Bashan house, and kill everyone there, in an attempt to hide the abduction. Three men were arrested. Two of them appear to be Lucian Alliance spies operating on Earth. The third, nominally in charge of the mission, is known to you both, I believe. He’s an ex-CIA agent named Trent Kort.”

Ziva’s eyes had got larger and larger… until she made a shriek of anger and bolted from her chair… to be calmly shot by Spencer, with the zatnikitel he held in his lap. She dropped to the floor, and the SFs hustled forward, although they were unsure who they should restrain. Teal’c answered their confusion by pointing to the fallen woman. 

Spencer sighed. That was really so much easier than what he had done to Tony… a point to be considered later. 

“Until Ms David wakes up and I can finish briefing you both on the operation… I don’t suppose there’s anything you’d like to say?” Spencer offered the head of the family. 

Eli sighed. “She will not be reasonable about this.”

“No, I’m certain she won’t be. Neither will Agent DiNozzo.”

Eli huffed. “That joke.”

Spencer shook his head. “So much a joke that he was able to twist his own interrogation at Mossad to force an admission of guilt from you? I don’t suppose you’ve been listening to the wrong opinion about Agent DiNozzo? Not that it matters. I’m not sure how this… situation is going to play out with respect to your assignment here on Atlantis, I can’t imagine it improving your position… But you realize, you will never be allowed within reach of Talia DiNozzo? Or her father.”

Eli refused to answer aloud… but he was desperately frustrated and feeling thwarted, already scheming to recover lost ground. But his mind was so convoluted, so steeped in duplicity, subversion and obfuscations, so twisty and tangled… Spencer recoiled from it. The toxic stew of emotions were bad enough, and Spencer was running out of resources to deal with his own exhaustion and shock. 

The SFs had hand-cuffed Ziva to her chair, and stood at her shoulders to prevent any more attacks. She was finally rousing, groaning. Spencer had been told that a zat effects were of varying duration and intensity, depending upon the victim. But the headache afterward was a bitch.

“I apologize for that, Ms. David, but I do need to finish briefing you. After I’m finished, then you and your father can have a private conversation… I have no doubt you’ll need one. You know Trent Kort personally?”

Glaring, not even sure who she was angriest at this particular moment in time, she huffed, rattled her cuffs, then said, “We have met. He was involved in several cases handled by the NCIS MCRT.”

“Including the unsanctioned Benoit operation, when Kort attempted to kill Agent DiNozzo with a car bomb. You reported that incident to your father, of course?”

Ziva glanced daggers at the older man. “Yes. He told me that he knew Kort. This is not strange, as there is much overlap between Mossad and CIA CI/CT operations. They had… done business several times over the years.”

Spencer nodded. “So Kort reported in his interrogation. Mr. David, was Kort’s previous history with Agent DiNozzo the reason you chose him for your attempt to… secure Talia DiNozzo?”

“She is my grand-daughter.”

“You weren’t supposed to ever know she existed!” Ziva hissed. 

Eli gave his daughter a dismissive look. “Please, Ziva. You disappear for seven months and you expected me not to check it out?” He was disenchanted with his daughter’s obtuseness. “Of course I knew about my little Talia. But she was safe enough with Dr. Bashan… until I had need of her.”

Spencer felt his temper firing up. “Need?” he queried as neutrally as he could.

“When I secured the IOA assignment to Atlantis, for myself and Ziva, I judged that Talia needed to be in a more secure location, with people I trusted.”

“Trent Kort!” Ziva demanded. “You trusted Trent Kort with such an assignment?” Spencer allowed the woman to assist in his interrogation. Where the subject might not have reacted to Spencer’s challenge, his daughter’s obvious scorn turned him defensive.

“He is an experienced and skilled asset.”

“Yes, one who uses bombs to get what he wants!”

“And that is the first problem,” Spencer agreed mildly, “because his plan was to take the child in the middle of the night, and then bomb the house, killing all inside, in order to throw off any suspicions. Best case scenario, no one would even know there had been a child in the house at all, worst case the hunt would be significantly delayed until the ashes had been combed through.”

“Deena?” Ziva gasped. Furious eyes turned on her father. “He would have killed Deena! You…” and there followed a string of guttural swearing that Spencer preferred not to translate.

“The second problem,” Spencer interrupted, “is that Mr. Kort was approached by another group, who obviously knew of his mission for you, as well as your assignment with the IOA, and decided it would be to their benefit to have leverage on you, in the form of your grand-daughter. How they knew all this, Kort wasn’t able to determine. But they were agents of the Trust operating on Earth, or perhaps the Lucian Alliance, I’m not clear if there is even a distinction to be made between the two at this point. They revealed themselves to him, and paid him to continue your contract, but to turn the child over to them afterward. Apparently, they also promised him asylum on another planet, well out of your sphere of influence. He agreed.”

Ziva paled, but Eli was now the one swearing a blue streak in Hebrew. 

“All of which,” Spencer declared, “clearly constitutes an exigent threat to innocent civilians. Dr. Bashan is presently in protective custody with the acting Director of Mossad, Orli Elbaz…” Spencer had to pause while Ziva got over a violent and sudden negative reaction to that name, “while I am in the process of enacting protocols to protect Talia DiNozzo and her father. 

“As blood relations, you both do have some justification to claim visitation rights to Talia, at least, but given the current evidence, I am reluctant to allow it. For instance, Ms David, you have shown no interest in interacting with your child before this. Placing her in the care of a person you trust is admirable, but you endangered them both in the process. As for you, Mr. David… grand-father or not, were you aware that Mr. Kort, in following your instructions, would murder Dr. Bashan, and anyone in her vicinity at the time of the kidnapping?”

That made Eli stop in his tracks, and face Spencer. Even his thoughts were hidden, walled up behind a devious soul. “Of course not. Deena is a family friend. She stayed with my daughters time out of mind as a child…”

“Then it was simply an error in judgement that you chose Kort as your agent in this? Knowing how he hated DiNozzo? Knowing that he had no problem with collateral damage in his attempts to avoid detection, and his weapon of choice is explosives? When you presumably had any number of subordinates still loyal to you who might have been able to employ more… subtle tactics?”

Yeah, there was no good answer to that one. Cameron huffed on a laugh as Eli glared. 

“You are extremely fortunate that Mr. Kort did not explicitly state that you ordered him to murder anyone in his mission. Kidnapping, in this case, with a blood connection, might be considered a custody issue rather than a capital crime. Until this moment in time, at least. Because now Talia has been turned over to the guardianship of her blood parent, the only person whose name appears on her official legal birth certificate. Giving you and your daughter no rights in this situation. 

“Atlantis is possessed of an impressive surveillance system. She will be directed to track you both, every moment of your residence here. You will not be allowed to interact, or even see, Talia DiNozzo, and I will get an alert any time your movements might in any way intersect with Agent DiNozzo. I suppose I can’t stop you from calling him on comms, and asking him for permission to see or talk to Talia, but that will be his decision. And for the time being, I would not advise you make any attempt to confront Agent DiNozzo face to face. He is not inclined to be at all reasonable about either of you, so this is for your own protection.”

Spencer stood up. “That’s all I have to say. I suggest you talk to each other, get your thoughts in order, before you make any decisions. If you wish to contact me, I’ll be available on standard Atlantis comm channels.”

Neither of the Davids attempted to stop him or speak, so he nodded to the SFs to remove Ziva’s cuffs, and left the *Daedalus*, with Cam and Teal’c in tow.

Standing back on the east pier, he shook all over. “Those people are… *toxic*.”

Teal’c regarded him curiously. “You did not ask any questions.”

“I didn’t need to. Whether they get to stay on Atlantis at all, is not my decision to make. If they do have the political power behind them to force their appointment here, even after all this… well. The IOA has a mole working for the Lucian Alliance. I can certainly see that *they* would want Eli David here on Atlantis. He’s vulnerable to all sorts of… leverage, even without using Talia against him. And if Eli himself is involved with them, or is using some other form of extortion on IOA contacts to get to stay… well, I don’t have the right kind of authority to get to the bottom of that. For now, it’s enough to keep the David family well away from Tony and Talia.”

Å 

Once back at the NCIS office suite, they found Tony sitting in the reception room, holding his head, looking hung over, with Daniel and Vala sitting close by, watching him. 

Spencer had managed to keep a tight rein on his reactions… until now. The tidal wave of reactions was about to burst over his head, and he was hanging by a threat. 

“Vala, Daniel? Thank you. I need to speak to Tony privately now. Can you all please leave us?”

SG-1 filed out, Vala giving him a concerned glance.

Teal’c lingered behind the others and hovered in the door. He looked at both men, and said, “The Jaffa live by a harsh and unforgiving code. Freedom has allowed us to at least consider the virtues of mercy and forgiveness, but that’s a mere handful of years after centuries of slavery and a far more rigid standard of revenge for any slight. O’Neill has often had reason to curse the ‘Jaffa Revenge Thing’… which has caused us much suffering, when I acted out of heated emotion and would not be tempered by reason. In your place, Agent DiNozzo, I would indeed have murdered that man out of hand without consideration of consequences. But my team-mate Daniel Jackson would have done just as Agent Dr. Reid has done... used any means at his disposal to stop me. And… after time for reflection and meditation… maybe *much* time… I would have been grateful for his intervention.”

The Jaffa bowed gravely, and left. 

When the door whooshed shut… 

“Oh my God! Tony, I’m sorry! I’m *sooo* sorry! I… I… I *raped* you! I went in and I… I *forced* you to sleep! Oh my god… how… why… I can’t believe I *did* that!”

Tony had been about to blow up at his probie… but suddenly found himself with a lap-full of sobbing Spencer Reid, shaking in violent reaction, shocky, pale and trembling. And his own anger and frustration with the man melted away like early-morning fog. 

“Hey, hey! Spencer… Spence… Dr. Reid! That was not rape. Do not even suggest that.”

“But it *was*! Mental rape! I stuck my hand in your head and *made* you sleep!”

“Yeah, and… okay, I was pretty steamed. But you did the right thing. There was no way I was going to stop unless you made me. Not until I had my hands on that bastard’s damned throat.”

Tony thought it over… he had managed that much, at least, while they waited for Spencer to return. Garcia had shown him the interrogation report, and they had viewed the real-time surveillance of Spencer’s visit to the David father and daughter. 

Did he believe Eli had sanctioned the murder of Dr. Bashan, and whoever else, as acceptable collateral damaged in order to get his grand-daughter? Oh yeah. Did he have proof of it? No. Did he like the idea that Eli’s selfish and ruthless attempts to grab Tali had put the little girl in intolerable danger? Hell No!

But...

There had been too many times over the years when Gibbs had gone on one of his Ahab rampages, refusing to listen to reason… which now had picked up the tag ‘Jaffa Revenge Thing’ in his head... It seemed Tony had picked up the same reflexes, and he hated even the idea of that. His role had always been the loyal second, the back-up, and the brake, wherever possible… although he wasn’t sure how effective he had ever been. If he had been aware of this innate ability to stop someone cold by shoving them into a nap… Oh yeah, there would have been half a dozen times he would have gladly sent Gibbs beddy-bye, and lived with the inevitable consequences.

He awkwardly patted Spencer’s shoulder as the young man sobbed out the reaction. He wasn’t sure if the younger man was suffering some kind of physical fall-out from using his ability, or if this was a version of psychological trauma, or just the genius version of internal conflicting ethics. But, seriously, he didn’t think the kid deserved any of it. 

Tony was suddenly aware that, now that his temper tantrum was over, all he really felt was… overwhelming relief.

Spencer hiccupped and gasped a breath, looking up out of damp, astonished eyes. “Relief? But… but…”

Tony, although still angry… he could readily admit to that… now felt safe. It was pretty weird. For the first time in forever, someone had his back, someone he could trust absolutely to make the tough calls, and even protect him from himself, if necessary. And on this occasion… Yeah. It had been necessary. Every bit of that. 

“But… but…”

“Aht. Quit it. You used what you had at hand. And, I admit, it was better than getting zatted in the ass. Nice move on Ziva, by the way. That definitely made me feel better. I guess we should include a zatnikitel as standard safety equipment in future.”

“But… it was my mind. I reached in, without permission, and… and… no wonder people fear and hate zeds! No wonder! How many of us back on Earth can do that? All those rumours about gnarly mental powers… I never believed them! Never! I thought it was just a way to call us witches, so they could burn us at the stake, or drown us in the village pond…”

Tony blinked at that. “Um… not sure about that. I somehow doubt any of us have been running around rearranging people’s heads… but that’s something to look at another time. For now… I want to thank you. You stepped up and stopped me making a huge mistake. Seriously, Spencer, you did what you had to do. I had no business going off the rails like that...”

“Oh now you’re just being ridiculous. Of course you had every right. It was a perceived threat to Tali. More than just perceived, in fact. That bastard David…”

“Yeah, not to mention that bastard Trent Kort. That one-eyed bastard has been a pain in my butt for years. He blew up my cherry ’67 Mustang! With one of his own minions inside, no less! Some boss.”

Spencer shook his head. “I need a rule book. Like, now! I need protocols for using this… this super power of mine. I can’t just… do stuff like that! Not just because I can!”

“Okay. Okay. We’ll work on it. For now… well, there’s always the rules of evidence gathering, right? If it’s in plain sight, it’s fair game. You know about cold reads? Used by con men and mentalists to read people.”

“Of course I cold read,” Spencer declared with a bit of a huff, even as he wiped his wet eyes on his sleeve. “I’m a profiler and a poker player. I read every pose, twitch and tremble, every change of breath or temperature, blink and iris dilation.”

“Yeah. Beat cops get real good at it. It’s situational awareness, and it’s a survival skill every cop has to pick up. And whatever else we are, Probie, we are beat cops here in Pegasus. So when we enter a room or a village, we get a cold read on everyone around us... but I suggest we need to get a hot read too... pick up on the emotions people are broadcasting into the ether. We don’t even need to get inside them for that, they’re pushing it out at us. Plain sight evidence. Right?”

Spencer nodded. “Right.”

“As for personal property search and seizures... where a person of interest has expectation of privacy? What are the rules on those?”

Spencer frowned. “We may only enter if we have the permission of the home owner, if we have a signed warrant, or if we have exigent circumstances.”

Tony grinned. “There you go. In the blue glade, the zed-man gave you permission, even if you refused. Signed warrants... we’ll have to work on that aspect. But with me... that was definitely exigent. Believe me, Probie, I wasn’t going to stop until you put a bullet in my leg, and maybe not even then. Getting a little nap-time instead? Definitely to be preferred. Even getting a zat in the ass would be better than getting shot.

“So is that good enough for now?” 

Spencer reluctantly nodded. Tony blew out a sigh of relief. 

“Okay. Now, I can *feel* how exhausted you are, and that headache definitely needs an aspirin. Go take a nap. You can be on night watch tonight, while I spend quality time with my family. Fair enough? ‘Cause you know, I’m going to have to tell Tey about all this when she gets back from her mission… And she is not going to be any happier or easy to control than I was. Maybe less. Protector instincts are not to be trifled with.”

Å


	9. Lessons Learned

Å 

Tony began tossing with the first crack of thunder in the autumn air. The storm was not supposed to be overly destructive, but it had swept up quickly on the floating city, and the static in the air had the more sensitive residents on edge. The restless motions of her mate woke Teyla. With some concern, Teyla petted his shoulder. He came awake suddenly, stiff with alarm, staring around the darkened room and reaching for the knife under his pillow… until a brief glare of lightning illuminated the bed. Panting with left-over adrenaline, Tony struggled to calm himself. He had no fear he might have harmed his mate… Teyla was far too adept in handling his nightmares. 

Teyla continued to pet him until his racing heart slowed, and his breathing became more normal. Even though the scarring and damage to his lungs from the plague had been repaired by the advanced Lantean infirmary equipment, it was as if his lungs *remembered* the injury, and acted like the scars still suffocated him.

Teyla considered that maybe such an analogy fit other aspects of her beloved’s character. He had many long-standing scars, that did not show, may have healed in some fashion, but still strangled him in the dark watches of the night. And it made her ache for him. 

He turned into her arms, and they kissed, long, holding each other desperately as the storm crashed over their heads, and the heavy pelting rain began.

He began to shudder, tried to pull away, and she only held him tighter. 

“Hush, love. You are safe. I swear it. And you know I will not press for you to reveal all your secrets. But should you wish to speak, I will listen. I will keep your counsel, and your secrets, as I keep your body safe in my arms.”

Tony snorted a little into her neck. “Spencer says there’s no such thing as safety. It’s an illusion.”

“Perhaps. But my vows to you are very real, and you cannot help but be more safe with me here, than without. True?”

He chuckled. “I need to point that out to Spencer. He’s still giving his suitors a hard time. All of ‘em.”

“Jealous, my love?”

“Hell no. I have exactly what I want. I just… wish he had a little of that same feeling. But… from what he’s told me, what’s in his file… I don’t think he’s ever known safety. And the only family he’s ever been able to trust and rely on are his team. I just… I guess he was luckier there than I was.”

Teyla had heard some of this… how Tony came to be so alone and adrift when he arrived on the city. Tony had never had a family he could trust, both parents irresponsible drunks who rarely remembered he existed, until they needed a ‘show child’, as he called it. He had learned early to build and wear masks to hide his pain, his loneliness, his feelings of inadequacy, trying to be what his parents seemed to want, only to feel he had failed when they forgot him anyway. Then his mother died, and his father… Tony called him a conman. Teyla remembered the trickster Lucius, who lived by his wits and lied, stole, abused the trust of everyone he came near in the name of his own survival. A con-man had no ability to care for anyone else, not even blood. Tony’s father had sent a grieving, lonely boy away to school and rarely saw him ever again… denied their family ties, left Tony abandoned. 

Teyla knew altogether too much about Earth attitudes to zeds… and Tony hadn’t even known what he was until suddenly he was bleeding and bent double with cramps. Bad enough he was alone and in a military academy… but as a zed? He hid it, desperately went to extraordinary lengths to keep his ‘Mother of All Secrets’ or MOAS as he called it… his apprenticeship under a conman had come in useful for something, Tony had grudgingly and wryly admitted. Teyla didn’t press on exactly how bad it had got for young Tony… it made her heart bleed for him as it was.

He hid his true nature, his zed gender, desperate… no one else at a military academy was even Z-positive… he had to do the research himself, had to come up with every con in the book to hide the mottling and avoid exposure, avoid ever getting blood tests… 

“It’s why I avoid hospitals like the plague – hunh, joke,” he had once told her, self-deprecating. “Well, that and the fact some pain-killers cause me to run off at the mouth… can’t afford that, either.”

It became a repeated and terribly sad pattern for him, building families around him, even though he feared to let them too close. And all too often, those granted even a small amount of his trust betrayed him. He feared to reveal his MOAS, feared he would never be enough for them to *chose* him, whether they knew his MOAS or not… the fear eventually causing him to leave them behind, before they could unmask and abandon him. His frat brothers, the police departments he’d worked, where he could never seem to stay more than two years… Peoria, Philadelphia, Baltimore. Even the Macalusos, when he got in too deep near the end… they, at least, knew he was zed, and being able to acknowledge that made it all the harder for him to keep the necessary emotional distance from people he was there to betray.

Then he bumped into Leroy Jethro Gibbs… literally. NCIS was one more family, although the most stable he’d been able to create yet… his growing feelings for his mentor, his partner, his Boss… But who could he trust, ever, with his MOAS, and history of being betrayed? Those few occasions where bad cases, or worse situations at work, had driven him to seek solace in drunkenness… were those just ways he allowed his walls to open up to select people? With Gibbs? But Gibbs, although he had kept Tony’s secret, and taken advantage of his body, just as he had always taken advantage of his skills, dedication and loyalty… had then rejected the offered relationship. Twice! Teyla steamed, just thinking of that man… what she would have to say to Leroy Jethro Gibbs if she ever got him in front of her.

“When Tom Morrow and AJ Chegwidden practically shanghaied me right out from under Vance’s clutches… they guaranteed me that my gender status would never be revealed to anyone, not by them. It was my secret to keep. But Atlantis… 

“The city spoke to me. Furalin. And it wasn’t long before I realized… I carried one last memento from my years at NCIS, watching Gibbs’ six. I was ‘outed’, whether I liked it or not… 

“Ronon was the first to come sniffing around.”

Teyla chuckled. “Literally. Protectors know immediately exactly who and what you are, not to mention your… delicate condition.”

“And Ronon… dayum! That guy… what was not to like!”

He grinned to his mate. Yes, she knew all about the sudden attraction and the brief but tempestuous and passionate interlude Tony had spent with her team-mate. She couldn’t help but be well aware of every single moment they spent together in those first few weeks. Tony had been struggling to heal from his last posting, and find his feet in this one. Teyla had waited… and stalked her prey, like any good hunter. She knew Ronon, knew he was indulging in a fling, still too damaged himself to commit to anyone or anything but his over-riding dedication to avenging his home world. Tony and Ronon. They made quite the pair, both of them bleeding from emotional wounds, neither ready for long-term… both taking comfort in a no-strings temporary encounter. And Teyla knew with growing certainty… 

Tony was for her. A precious gift from gods she no longer believed in, no longer worshipped. 

Tony stared deep into her beautiful light-filled eyes. “But he was nothing compared to you. So strong, so kind, so wise, so gentle… you say what you mean and mean what you say, always… wise beyond almost anyone I’ve ever met… and you had my number in *minutes*! And you call me on my masks, my evasions, my mis-directions… you don’t fall for any con I try to run. You see straight through them... straight through to me. The first time you called me on a lie… I fell for you like a ton of bricks, right then and there.”

Teyla grinned, running her sensitive Protector fingers over his body. Scars on the skin traced with love and respect. “You cannot lie to a Protector, my beloved. But you weren’t trying to fool me. You were testing me. You still test me, upon occasion… no, it is fine. It is a reflex. Too many have abandoned you in the past. I understand this. 

“I need you, Tony, to match me. Your mercurial nature, mine the steadfast one, you lightning in a bottle… I never know what to expect, always surprised, and instead of it being bad news, it’s always good. And you have brought me laughter. That is a gift beyond compare.

“But you realize, I hope… you have my respect, as well as my love. We are alike in many ways, I think… that we have known loss, and still have the strength and courage to go on, and find new love. This is common enough for the peoples of Pegasus… we have lived too many centuries under the threat of the Wraith, we know too well the tightrope walk of life… the Wraith could come at any moment and take anyone… How to go on in the face of that reality? This is just the way it is in Pegasus… we live for the day. Time is too valuable to waste, we must fight for every moment, because when you stop, you die. But well I know most of the people of Earth have never had to face such truth. It makes it hard for me, and my people, to relate to them. They treat their security as a given. And no, Spencer is right, it is not real, not as this is real…” and she kissed him, ardently. “You understand this.”

Tony fell eagerly into her embrace.

“I never dreamed I could have this… from the time I knew I was zed… I thought I was never going to be able to come clean with anyone… I risked losing too much. But… I just couldn’t live alone. It’s not in me to be alone. You know… I’m a team player. I always have been. Team sports, team work, team families… I need it. Like I need oxygen. But not until Atlantis… not until you, did I find someone I knew I could trust, without reservation, to keep my heart safe. And if anything I can do to make sure that Torren and Tali and little AJ can live without the fears you and I had to grow up with…”

Teyla laughed, suddenly. “Ronon was chuckling over that earlier... Tony Teyla Torren and Tali.”

Tony joined in her light-hearted laughter. “Little AJ is breaking the pattern, hunh? Maybe we should make it TJ? Your father’s name was Tagan, right? Tagan Jethro.”

“My father would be most honored to have a Veralin name-sake.”

Tony replied, “Well, I’m pretty damn certain my dad would not, if he even cared. So it’s settled. Tagan Jethro. TJ.” 

Å 

No one was thrilled about the Eli David situation, not even the IOA, who still, in the teeth of all objections, insisted he and his daughter be kept in Atlantis, at least until the IOA found a more suitable representative to send out in his place. Jack and Chegwidden had had a number of discussions on that topic… most referred to Hetty’s investigative team. It was all too likely that the ultimate strings were being pulled by the Trust, or the Lucians.

But Jack had managed to get the IOA to admit the situation was untenable where Very Special Agent DiNozzo was concerned… a woman with lethal skills who had betrayed him by cutting comms on an undercover op, had born him a child and denied him knowledge of it… a man who had attempted kidnapping of said child, even if it might, if one squinted *real* hard, be considered a domestic custody situation… but was undeniably a case of child endangerment no matter what else it was… the history between DiNozzo and the Davids was just too poisoned to let go. So Agent Dr. Reid’s ‘restraining order’ protocol was allowed, even by the IOA. 

Jack knew there had been a private, but very long, communication between Eli and the IOA. The ex-Mossad Director had come out red-faced and mortified. Yeah, even the IOA was realizing maybe Mossad had been right to cut the guy loose. He was obviously dropping the ball all over the damn place, and so was his ‘security agent’, who had been sent out with three chicks to protect, and two had been murdered right under her supposedly well-trained and skilled nose. 

Eli and Ziva were given quarters in a remote tower on the south pier, informed that Atlantis was going to be watching them twenty-four/seven (or, in New Lantea terms, thirty-two/eight). If they should find that the transport cabinets failed them, they would be alerted that it was because they were attempting to enter a proscribed area, or one Tony or Talia DiNozzo were presently inhabiting, They would have to wait, gain special permissions, or an escort, maybe all three, before they could proceed.

Neither attempted to approach Tony. The matter of Tali was left as it stood. Perhaps they were waiting for a more auspicious time, hoping Tony’s ire would fade and he would be more receptive to any visitation requests. Perhaps that’s what it was.

Å 

But, upon reflection… Tony did find his perspective on one issue changing out from under him, as he grew closer to his already much-beloved and precious daughter. It was time to make himself a DVD to send home.

“Hey, Gibbs. You want to throw this in the trash, fine, go for it. But, just a warning, maybe you want to fast-forward to the end, first. There’s stuff you need to hear, and I’m leaving it to the end. 

“I told myself I wasn’t going to waste my time trying to recover whatever dysfunctional mess of a friendship we may once have had… I sure as hell know better than to try and wring an apology out of you for the way shit went down. That’s a weakness, right? Sometimes life just slams shut the fucking door… and I found an open window that led to a much better future. 

“But Fornell sent me a message… he didn’t outright say it, but he hinted around that maybe… maybe you might have a few regrets… and… maybe so do I. I didn’t like the way we left things. I feel like… I at least need to clear the air, for closure. For me. 

“First up… guess who walked into my Casablanca bar the other day? Ziva & Eli showed up at my base. That’s right. The last two people on Earth I would have expected. And Ziva had a bombshell to drop in my lap. Seems as if she had a kid, that year Vance broke up the team, sent Ziva home to Israel and me agent afloat. And… go figure… she says it’s mine. Of which I have no doubt. Tey? Can you send her in?”

A cherubic little girl ran giggling to her father’s arms. He pointed to the camera. “Say ‘hi’ to uncle Gibbs, Tali.” 

“Hi-ee!” giggled the little girl, as Tony laughingly tickled her. 

“Okay, okay. Off you go, back to momma Tey. I’ll see you later, but I gotta talk to uncle Gibbs for a bit, and I may not be using language fit for little ears.”

Tony smiled, green eyes sparkling with love as he watched his daughter go… but with the whoosh sound, he sobered and turned back to the camera. 

“That was Talia DiNozzo, in case you wondered. I have no idea if you knew… if Ziva told you, or what she had to say about it… I swear, I had no idea. As far as I knew… as far as I *know*, Ziva hates my guts, and has tried to kill me any number of times, even before she left me hanging on that undercover op. The night Jenny died, I went on a bender to end all benders. Not too bright of me, I know… Next morning, I found myself back in my hotel room, with no idea how I got there. Apparently, Ziva found me. No idea what she was thinking… she didn’t use a condom. I figure that means she was gearing up to accuse me of rape, to get me to take the blame for Jenny’s death. But she didn’t know I was zed. Nasty shock for her, hunh? And why she decided to have it, and not just get herself an abortion? No clue. You’d have to ask her that. I honestly don’t care.

“So she shows up here at my base… shocker. And when I go to try and sue for truce between us – keep it professional, live and let live, all that… I find out about Tali. Am I steamed? Oh yeah, you betcha. Because Ziva left her own kid with a family friend, Deena Bashan, remember Ziva talking about her? A good woman. But Tali’s birth certificate doesn’t even list a mother, just me. So I got some people I trust to collect her and send her home to me.

“Anyway… Ziva hiding Tali’s existence from me made me realize it wasn’t fair of me to do the same damn thing… and here’s what you need to know, even if you ignore the rest of this.”

Tony stood up and gestured to his belly, putting his hands on the swelling and rubbing lovingly, with a smile blossoming on his face.

“So, okay, our final farewell was a little bourbon-soaked, enough that I didn’t register the lack of a condom… and maybe I was a little resentful of you and how it all went down at the end… maybe a whole lot resentful. And I had no plans of ever coming back to DC, or having any contact with anyone there ever again… still feeling too bitter. But this? No regrets. None.

“He’s zed, male identified. He’s Tagan Jethro, we’ll be calling him TJ. 

“So there it is, Gibbs. I’m happy here. I love my new post, the people, I have supportive bosses, what a change that makes, and a great new probie who has my back… way smarter than McGee, better shot than Ziva, and, I’m prepared to bet, at least as good as you or I at investigations. Also, I’ve found true love, and a *real* family of my own, so… it’s all good. Getting tossed off the MCRT was the best thing that could have happened to me. So… I guess… thanks for that, anyway.

“Which brings us back to TJ. He’s due in another couple of months. I’ll send you a birth announcement. If you want contact with him after he’s born… we’ll have to talk, there’s a lot of logistical issues, I’ll try my best to make it happen, if that’s what you want. But it’s your move from here, Gibbs. You can send me a message through Fornell. Otherwise… so long, and have a nice life.” 

Å 

It hadn’t even been a week yet since he first arrived on the Lost City of Atlantis, and already, Spencer felt more at home here than anywhere else he’d ever been. 

Not that there weren’t… challenges. His new friends and co-workers might laugh at the trail of broken hearts he was apparently leaving behind him… he was pretty sure none of them were more than vaguely interested, and he didn’t know what to make of all this… acceptance. Day by day, he was coming to have a better appreciation of Dr. Thibideau’s issues. 

And yes, there were a few… haters. He had managed to suss out four in his first two days, just by using his profiler skills. A couple more, being excessively careful to keep under the radar, had been uncovered by his casual mental scanning of any public areas he entered. Tony had been pleased when he reported these people – only one had escaped his own notice in his six months on the city.

After a few difficult discussions, Tony had convinced him that ‘situational awareness’ was not, in fact, mind invasion, and by keeping himself empathically open for a ‘hot read’, anyone projecting out an emotion, like Ziva’s fury in that first meeting with Tony, was fair game. In fact, the two agents had both been practicing their hot reads, ‘trolling for negative vibes’ as Tony called it. Which could result in one hell of a headache, unless they kept their ‘familiars’ close by. Now, they were at a stage where they could patrol independently for best results. Community policing, as Tony said.

Spencer was occasionally startled by just how much he was learning from Tony’s unique style of law enforcement. It was a totally different breed of animal from the BAU focus on serial offenders, called in after initial investigations stalled. He was learning a lot, and gaining a new appreciation of the job local LEOs did. His estimation of Derek Morgan went up as well, and it had already been high. Tony told him that treating Atlantis like a small town, with small town gossip, petty sins and secrets, mostly behind closed doors but apt to occasionally flare out into public violence, made the most sense from a law enforcement perspective. The incidence of problems from unstable personalities was perhaps a little higher than a normal town, due to PTSD issues and the stress from the perpetual crisis-mode that Atlantis seemed to engender, but Spencer could well grasp the analogy. A small town on the front lines of a deadly war, positioned to rescue victims en masse, and risk bringing in ringer spies along with the truly needy. Not an unknown problem in post-Cold War reality.

Already, Spencer had witnessed a rescue operation. Major Evan Lorne and Major Anne Teldy had led their teams when called by a trading partner suddenly under attack from Wraith darts. 

After a hectic two hours, almost three hundred people had been brought onto the city, given food, medical attention, and found accommodations. A call to the mainland for the Athosian elders brought sympathetic locals to help settle the shell-shocked people. 

Theirs had been one of the larger agricultural worlds… barely half their number had made it to safety on the city, and they had already been devastated by Hoffan plague less than a year before. Without significant help, they wouldn’t even be able to bring in the next harvest, so they faced starvation come winter, along with everything else. In a few days time, once they had recovered somewhat, they would have some difficult decisions to make on the future of their surviving people. Struggle to maintain their home villages, emigrate to another planet, with a big enough population to accommodate them, or join the Athosians (and something like seventeen other remnant populations) on the New Lantea mainland. 

The next day, Spencer took his turn wandering through the common areas, the mess, and a large gathering hall where a semi-permanent market had been set up, with local tribes trading a variety of hand-produced goods – food, leather goods, intricately carved wood and bone items, textiles.

He returned for lunch, to find Major Marks, XO of the *Daedalus*, calling his name. Marks and a number of other crew members were sitting with some Atlantis military personnel, finishing up their meals. “Dr. Reid! We’re just about to start up a little friendly game of poker. Care to join us?”

Marks put on an innocent look, but you didn’t need to read minds to tell the guy was preparing a joke on his fellows. That sort of thing never ended well for Spencer, so he decided to defuse the joke himself. 

“I think I’ll pass on the game, but let me show you a few things.”

One of those with Marks was Captain Groves, a member of one of the Atlantis Reconnaissance teams, a heavyset man with red hair who was one of those who kept his hatred of zeds under a careful cover. He spent a lot of time with his team mates, Lorenzo and Snider, not nearly as subtle as he in their prejudices, and off-time with two more with whispered resentment of the sudden ‘invasion of the effems’. Their resentment was further fuelled by the fact they had been loyal and avid customers of Master Sergeant Donnetti. But here, Groves was out-numbered by those who were more curious than resentful, and he was politically astute enough to realize an anti-zed stance in this place and time would do his career no favors. 

Bast eyed him with some suspicion, but reserved her opinion. 

Someone handed Spencer a deck of cards, and he ran through a few simple tricks. Simple, but effective. Soon there was a crowd gathered around, laughing and clapping. It included a fair number of Pegasus locals, including a dozen or so from yesterday’s rescue.

“Wait! Are you the Magic Veralin?” asked one delighted – and very young – voice.

Spencer was caught by surprise. “Am I the what?”

“We have heard of you! The Magic Veralin! You can turn people into birds!” 

“Okay, no, I can’t, actually. I made a feather appear and disappear…” he demonstrated with a playing card, reaching out to take an ace of spades from behind the ear of a charmed teenage girl. He had only been to one planet in Pegasus… only one planet apart from Earth, but it seemed word got around *fast* in the Pegasus galaxy.

As he did a few more tricks, with napkins and pens, he detected the faintest whiff of… fear. 

It wasn’t an Atlantis Expedition member. He ran through a few routines as he reached for more information. 

There was a whisper in the back of his mind as he probed through the room, to locate the source of the negative emotion. They kept to the outskirts of the crowd. 

‘I don’t belong here with these… these food! They stole from the Masters… all these who should have fed the Masters… Veralin! The Veralin, here! A Magic Veralin! How… what magic *is* this?’

Spencer knew this. Wraith-worshipper. One of these people was… then another errant thought grabbed for his attention. 

‘A Magic Veralin. Not good. This could upset all of our careful plans…’

Two different sources of threat. Spencer struggled to try and tack it down, eyes darting over the crowd to try and determine who… 

But there was suddenly an even stronger ‘disturbance in the force’… 

Ziva David had arrived. She was alone. In her two days allowed to roam at will (or almost) through the city, she had already attracted the attention of all six anti-zed enthusiasts on the city. Now she strutted into the mess hall and plowed through the crowd to scoff at him. 

“So, you let a zed trick you? Do not play poker with him, he will surely cheat you! None of those mutant mistakes can be trusted!”

There was an instant polarization of the crowd at these hostile remarks, and Ziva had no idea just how much danger she was in right now. Spencer was willing to intervene… but it turned out to be unnecessary. Because Teyla had entered on Ziva’s tail, with both AR-1 and SG-1 in support. 

There had been high-level conferences going on all week, plotting future initiatives for the expedition. Sam Carter, Jack O’Neill and Richard Woolsey were in complete agreement, for the most part. SG-1 was going to attempt to make contact with the Pegasus Veralin, so would take first-contact missions to any planet rumored to harbor one or more. First contact was, after all, an SG-1 specialty, along with negotiating with aliens. AR-1, at Rodney McKay’s insistence, would track down the addresses supplied on the Asuran data crystal. These might be longer missions, as many of the planets had no stargates, and had to be approached by Puddle jumper, from the nearest gate. No doubt one of those future mission planning sessions had just completed, because both teams were present. 

Ronon and Teyla, with their finely honed Protector senses, had both witnessed Ziva’s arrival, and heard her inflammatory words, of course. 

“Ziva David!” Teyla barked out. “You will apologize immediately for your unjust comments to a Veralin who has done you no wrong.”

Ziva whirled and faced Teyla. “Ah. So you are Tony’s current plaything? You think you can keep his interest beyond a week or two? I doubt it. He is a play-boy, a frat boy, with one-night stands every day of the week, two dates on the weekends… never the same girl twice. Like every other hermaphrodite, he doesn’t have it in him to be constant to any lover. He’s the joke of NCIS. Director Vance was only too glad to be rid of him, finally. And playing sheriff here on the frontier of nowhere? A fitting place for him. At least here he can do no great amount of damage.”

Teyla eyed the angry woman, and nodded. “I see. Tony said you had respect for no one and nothing beyond your father. That is a serious error on your part, to be so totally unwilling to appreciate and measure an opponent. I thought perhaps Vala Mal Doran would have taught you your mistake, but I see more lessons are required. Would you care to join me in the training room? We have a fighting style with bantos rods. It might interest you.”

Apart from Ziva herself, there wasn’t a single person present who was unaware of Teyla’s lethal skill with bantos rods. Everyone held their breath… 

Spencer knew, without reaching, that Ziva could no more turn down the challenge than she could stop breathing. 

“I accept.”

That guaranteed everyone present would troop after to watch this epic battle. 

Spencer lingered back, reaching once more to try and catch the threads of the two people he had sensed before… But he came up empty. 

Å 

Teyla had a point to make, and it was clear to her that only by besting this Earth woman physically did she hope to get her message across. Vala had already told her that, once they had fought in the *Daedalus* gym, Ziva had been far more cautious and far less confrontational around the ex-pirate. Teyla might regret the necessity… really, such contests were the stuff of early childhood, not grown adults… but she would not tolerate this woman and the threat she posed, so near the members of her family. 

Ziva must acknowledge that she was in Atlantis on sufferance. She must be taught that threatening those whom a Protector claimed as their own was a *BAD* idea… and if the threat persisted, could even prove fatal.

So once the two women kicked off shoes and picked up the rods, there was silence in the gym, the audience hardly daring to breathe. The locals all knew what Teyla was… if this stupid Earth woman had chosen to challenge, then she was about to get a stern lesson.

Unlike the encounter with Vala aboard the *Daedalus*, there was no playing, no taunts, only two serious minded woman who would not submit, would not bend or surrender. And when they clashed, there was no quarter, no mercy, no holding back. It was brutal. And awe-inspiring.

But of the two, Ziva fought only for pride, too angry to have total control of her skills… Teyla fought with cold, targeted focus, for her rights, as a citizen of Atlantis, mate of Tony, and parent of Tali when Ziva herself had given up those rights. She was a Protector, a Sentinel, and she fought for the right to protect what was hers.

Å 

When Ziva was rolled on a gurney into the infirmary, there were no broken bones, only a few places where the skin had been broken – a scraped knee that had landed too hard, a split lip, and a knick from a knife that Ziva had unwisely drawn in desperation before Teyla took it from her… but there was not a single square inch anywhere on her body that wasn’t bruised. 

By the time Teyla was finished, barely even breathing hard, Ziva finally was forced to recognize that, in this case, she had bitten off more than she could chew. Teyla’s stern warning to never speak disrespectfully of any Veralin, ever again, was grudgingly accepted. 

“Tony is mine. Tali is mine. Atlantis is mine. Be warned,” the diminutive woman said, and left. Not even limping. Ziva hadn’t managed to land a single blow.

Å 

Tony propped a wall outside the gym. He cocked an eyebrow at his mate. “I hear you just fought a duel for my honor.”

Teyla hesitated, but straightened her spine. “It was my right. Do you object?”

Tony thought it over, then grinned. “Actually, I’m thinking it’s pretty hot, you fighting for me. Spencer is getting the surveillance tape downloaded for me now.” 

Å 

Daniel and Spencer had agreed to continue Spencer’s language lessons for learning the Lantean version of the Ancient language. Part of that was Spencer assisting Daniel’s database searches for information on the Furling. 

Spencer was a little bit conflicted about this… From the spirit plane and from Tony, he had access to information that would definitely make all the difference to Daniel’s research… but it felt a little like betrayal, revealing Furling secrets. In his own mind, Spencer likened it to Tony’s first rule… the first rule of the blue jungle was not to talk about the blue jungle. If Daniel challenged him flat out, Spencer would answer truthfully, because it would mean Daniel had already got there on his own, and only needed confirmation. 

Spencer was also spending time in the map room. Geographic profiling being his specialty, he and Tony had discussed the necessity for getting some kind of handle on Wraith movements in Pegasus, so he was running scenarios to track historic movements of the enemy. If voids in their distribution also indicated Furling presence… well. There was no requirement to report absence of an enemy.

With the close of his first week in Pegasus, Spencer was back in the map room, with the hologram representation of the galaxy swirling above him, lit up with color codes for inhabited worlds, abandoned and culled worlds, known Wraith strongholds, presence of known Wraith-worshippers or Genii rogue groups, tracking elements of the Traveler fleet as well… And a bright dot for Atlantis herself. Yes, there were voids in the picture, but galaxies are big… he was tempted to start quoting Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy on the subject of just how big space really was… 

He had just repeated a time-lapse sequence of the past ten years, beginning to sense a pattern… when he realized he had company. He recognized Daniel at once, of course, but… the linguist felt… different, somehow. More focused. Brighter. More… *there*.

Daniel gazed reflectively up at the picture revolving slowly above. Spencer wondered what he saw there. In working with Daniel, he had developed a huge respect and appreciation of the man’s brilliance. Like Spencer himself, at least part of his facility with languages was a formidable skill at code breaking and pattern recognition, combined with a unique inclination toward lateral thinking. ‘Outside the box’ didn’t come close to describing the man’s intuitive leaps of imagination and inspiration. 

And, yes, Daniel pointed out the very place that had caught Spencer’s attention, although he hadn’t quite determined why.

“From the time stamp… starting a year ago, their pattern changed. They’re congregating. There, there, there… Queens are extremely territorial and competitive. They rarely, if ever, cooperate, certainly not when resources are severely depleted . Only if they perceive a greater threat outside their species…”

“So they should be scattering, entrenching within their own borders, perhaps competing for perceived greener pastures, more desirable territories. Not coming together,” Spencer agreed. “A basic change in instinctive behavior patterns argues a new and powerful stressor. Emerging… a year ago? Garcia.”

“Yes, Vanilla Cream?” Atlantis must have found a voice print of Penelope Garcia from somewhere, so whenever Spencer or Tony addressed the subset of the AI that was devoted to their activities, it invariably used PG’s voice, and had picked up something of her insouciant way with nicknames, as well. Daniel coughed out a surprised laugh. Spencer just went on as if all were perfectly normal... as far as he was concerned, it was.

“What happened between twelve and sixteen months ago that might have been a significant stressor on the Wraith?”

“There was no one event, Junior G-Man. Several events all occurred within the time frame, or would have had their greatest effect at that time, including the Hoffan plague spreading, the Asuran offensive on human populations, even Michael’s activities. That would also include Atlantis leaving Pegasus to hunt down and destroy the Super Hives. Our best guess at present is that the Super Hive offensive was a collaborative effort, a last-ditch desperation move to locate Earth and the single largest safe source of food known to them. Its failure may have had devastating effect on any alliance formed among the Queens.”

“Then why are they gathering together now?” Daniel asked.

“Unknown at this time, Dr. Jackson.”

Spencer shook his head. “We need more information to even guess. It suggests a greater threat has been identified… but what that might be…”

Daniel stared up, eyes running over the repeated rerun of the time-lapse. And his eyes caught on another anomaly… Spencer waited, breath somewhat baited. 

“They swerved.”

“Hm?”

“They swerved. Not just one hive, several of them. They were combing that area… and each one just… swerved around this little bubble.”

Spencer nodded, waiting.

Daniel relaxed, sitting in one of the provided chairs, staring up, playing with a pen he had taken from his pocket. 

Out of left field came, “They may have been unimaginably advanced, but the Alterans weren’t the wisest of races. They made mistakes. A lot of them. I mean, every race does… We sure as hell have. No one, no matter what their race or species is immune to making mistakes… But, to quote a comic book hero, with great power comes great responsibility. Like… cleaning up after their errors in judgment. Which the Alterans are appallingly bad at.

“Now, we all know the Atlantis database is a mess… it almost looks deliberate, the difficulty it poses in any kind of system-wide searching on certain subjects… as if the Lanteans who left it behind were… *afraid* of those things. Like the ZPM technology. And the Furling. Their allies. But the Asgard Core is suspiciously silent on the subject of the Furling as well… 

“I’ve begun to wonder why the Furling withdrew from the Alliance of the Four Great Races. I’ve begun to wonder if… the Alterans… *did* something to them. It would account for the guilt that might require them to hide their mistake. But… what if that’s just the tip of the iceberg?

“We were sitting around the campfire once, on a mission in the early days of the project… SG-1, I mean… guessing what the Furlings would be like if we ever met them… Jack put money on them being small and furry, like ewoks. Sam guessed they’d be ascended too. Teal’c thought they might just be extinct… I guessed water sprites, maybe something like an otter. When Cam and Vala came on board, we gave them a chance at the pool, which, by that time, included everyone at the SGC. Vala wanted them to be angels. She had just learned about angels in Earth mythology. Cam thought they’d be glow bugs, like the fairy creatures from Disney’s ‘Fantasia’. 

“None of us guessed… dual-gendered humanoids with pink and purple mottling.”

Spencer took a deep breath… wondered what to tell Daniel… but he’d guessed most of it. This was obvious, when he added, somewhat wistfully, “They experimented on the Furling, didn’t they?”

“It wasn’t… quite what you think. It wasn’t forced, or anything,” Spencer had to answer. “The Furling were close to extinction. Their home planet, here in Pegasus, went through an extinction-level event, and with their low reproductive rate… the Alterans offered their help. They made a hybrid being… half Furling, half Alteran… able to breed with either race… and humans too, by the way. Furlings had a gene complex that allowed them to interface with other life forms and energies beyond their own body. The Alterans took just enough to allow them to interface with crystals that would resonate on command… the ATA control switch, and grafted it into their own genome.”

Daniel nodded. “So the Furling… or the hybrid Furalin? Have been living among us all this time… And instead of celebrating that, welcoming them and their wisdom and powers, we’ve been doing our level best to eradicate them from existence.”

Spencer shrugged. “If the Lanteans were guilty of anything, it was failing to respect a people who had no comparable *physical* technology. And they had no appreciation whatsoever for the spiritual side of existence. They were offended when they couldn’t just… ascend at will. The Furling and Furalin tried to tell them they had to be ready, and they weren’t. They didn’t want to hear that.”

“No… I imagine not… You’ve been in contact.”

“In a way. You’ve heard of the Spirit Plane?”

“Ah.”

“It isn’t open to everyone. Not all Furalin can reach it. They have to be ready, accepting, first. And, for some reason… and I’m not sure if it’s cause or effect, but… they need to gain the attention of cats.”

Daniel stared… then glanced to Bast, calmly licking her paw and pretending to ignore the humans altogether. And he burst out laughing. 

“Oh, wow! Okay… I… I was actually feeling a bit… put out, by the Furling… snubbing me. But if there’s some secret initiation process to go through first…”

“Not that, perhaps… it’s just that… even now, there are so very few of them, Furling or Furalin in Pegasus... and they have other concerns. Like evading the Wraith.”

“Do you know where they are? They didn’t tell you?”

Spencer shrugged. “No point, really, when we can talk any night on the Spirit Plane. We haven’t even asked. But…” and he pointed up at the visible and – now it was pointed out – obvious swerve, “that’s a big indicator.”

Daniel nodded. He fiddled a bit more with the pen, ostensibly focused entirely on it. 

“I went to Carson yesterday. To have a special procedure performed…”

Oh. Oh! That explained the change in Daniel’s… presence. 

“You took the ATA gene therapy. But you know what that means…”

“I’ll be Furalin, soon. I’m okay with that. My mother was Furalin. We always had cats swarming around our digs… but then, cats in Egypt? They’re everywhere anyway. It just… when I thought the Alterans had… done something really bad… I’ve been ascended. More than once. I guess I may have internalized some… zeitgeist guilt over the treatment of an ally people. Because I’m pretty sure it wasn’t just helping them out with a few reproductive alterations. They did something. I know it in my water.”

“Maybe,” Spencer reluctantly agreed. “But, I have been reliably informed that aliens… who knows what they’re really up to. You should be a little bit wary of anything you get from your Alterans.”

Daniel smiled wryly. “Oh, I know. Believe me. But… I suddenly had an opportunity to choose which side I wanted to be on. I took it.” 

That startled Spencer. All of the circles he knew… all of his team-mates, past and present, his own mother… all of the Z-positives on Earth, ten percent of the entire human race… had a choice. That just… hadn’t occurred to him before. Not the implications of it. That becoming Furalin could be a choice.

“It does take a while… years, according to Tony. Longer for males. The Furling, and the Furalin… we aren’t a higher life-form… we’re mortal too, and as vulnerable as anyone. And I thought… you didn’t want to take the therapy. I heard you were worried it would change you back into a Prior, or maybe resurrect forbidden knowledge from the ascended plane.”

Daniel shrugged. “Yeah, well… you pays your money, you takes your chance. And I don’t think it’s going to take me years. Those other… experiences… I think it’s putting me on an accelerated curve. I’ve already had the hormone flu, and Carson says my adjusted hormonal levels have already stabilized. So now… I guess I wait for my cats to show up, right?”

“Well that… and carry condoms with you at all times. And warn the people closest to you. You have told General O’Neill and Vala, haven’t you?”

Daniel gave the profiler a suspicious look. “Speaking of… Vala’s been acting… different lately. What the hell did you tell her?”

Spencer blinked. It was his most innocent, gormless look, as Garcia called it. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I am the *last* person anyone should come to for romantic advice. I’m barely registered as human, even with my team. Emily once poked me and said how amazingly life-like I was for a robot. Ask me about anthropological trends on courtship rites, and I’m the guy, but… only an alien would need my very weird perspective.”

“Uh-hunh. Nice evasion, Dr. Reid. An alien like… Vala, say?”

Å 

In the blue glade, the zed-patterned man waited patiently for the Furalin to gather. There were more this evening, there had been more and more gathered every time they met. And in the Protector’s ring beyond, there were more and more spirit animals congregating, circling, watchful. Occasionally, they would scent shadowy figures lurking in the jungle tangles beyond, and act quickly to drive them back. 

Carson Beckett was still having problems manifesting on this plane… as if he was unwilling, or afraid, to acknowledge the changes within. Daniel may have taken the ATA therapy and be changing… far more rapidly than any of the others had… but he had no cat yet, and Spencer did not expect to see him here any time soon. And although Anna claimed her seat, jostling others aside with her polar bear alter ego to plop herself front and center, Rodney McKay was being incredibly stubborn about denying this reality. Spencer had not had much chance to interact with the CSO so far… which, come to think of it, was odd, wasn’t it? Could the Canadian be avoiding him for some reason? Since Anna had no problem with him, it had not occurred to Spencer that Rodney might, or what the source of it might be. 

Spencer had been somewhat alarmed to learn there was a hierarchy among them… he wasn’t prepared to acknowledge that fact yet, or his place in it. But Bast was certainly unwilling to yield her place of honor in the Circle, although she graciously accepted Blair on one side, and Tony on the other. On Tony’s other side, Anne Teldy, with her rather ferocious-looking Pegasus predator, something like a bear with scales and spikes down its spine, was also accorded a certain amount of respect from all. And Miko’s whimsical Kitsune fox was also given pride of place, for wisdom and intuition, if not for the physical intimidation factor.

“You have done well, all of you,” the Furling congratulated them. “Your skills have already developed past all expectation, and still you continue to learn and grow. I await what new surprises you have for me with great anticipation. And Spencer, you in particular have come into your own. But of all our Earth-born children, you, with Blair and Tony, have been least willing to accept limitations placed upon you by the ignorance of others.

“Tell us, my child, what you have learned.”

Spencer stood, and looked around at all his kindred. The Furalin. 

“I have learned that we need rules. Our powers are great, will no doubt become greater, but if we are not to repeat the errors of others, including those who bully and oppress us for no better reason than they can… or if we wish to avoid the guilt and trauma if we go too far at some point and harm someone, against our will, theirs, or worse, with deliberate malice… Then we need rules to regulate our own use of those powers. Tony has helped me with that. I offer these conclusions to all of you, but you may chose to accept or reject them at your own free will.

“First, we are free to use our empathy to read ambient emotions… what is projected from those around us. This is a survival skill we all must use. We call it a ‘hot read’, and it is to complement, not replace, a ‘cold read’, which is situational awareness of the body language and physically expressed attitudes of those around us.

“But to enter the mind or another, much less manipulate them in any way, we need another set of rules. In law enforcement there are rules of evidence collection, for the lawful search and seizure of private property, where there is an expectation of privacy. For it to be justified, legal, one of three conditions must be met. One, permission of the property owner. Two, a legally signed warrant – permission of a higher authority, if you will. In our case, Tony and I will seek advice and consent from our superiors on Atlantis. That will go for the other members of the Atlantis Expedition, as well, or they may come to us. For the rest of you, I would ask you to seek the counsel of your elders, whoever they may be. And three… the hardest one, is exigent circumstances. If there is a perceivable immediate threat to a human, or sentient, I guess, and entering someone’s head is the only way we see to neutralize the situation, then we do what needs to be done. I have found that I can force a volatile person to sleep… to give that person a chance to cool off, or be restrained for the safety of everyone, including me. Although… I have to admit, a zat gun or stunner is much easier and less of a literal headache afterward.

“The last time we met, Furling Elder, you invited me to enter your mind to find your name. I was unwilling to do so at the time… in my mind, that would have been an intolerable invasion of your privacy, the ultimate privacy, of our own thoughts. I had recently had to endure such a violation myself, by an Asuran. I later claimed it was my choice, that the Asuran had permission… but he would have done it regardless, so I was just making the best of a situation I could not control. But under the rules Tony and I have set for ourselves… I have your permission?”

The Furling grinned. “You do, my child.”

Closing his eyes, Spencer reached…

“Jahar. Your name is Jahar.”

The Furling bowed. “Well done, Furalin. Well done, my child.”

The Furalin company stood and clapped, some cheering for the success of their unacknowledged leader.

Spencer grinned, wide and free. He cradled the fast-developing bulge in his belly, fondly caressing the tiny lives within. “My daughter is going to be Diana Maeve. If you will allow… I would like to give my son your name. You, my current mentor, along with my former mentor, Jason Gideon. Jason Jahar. I’ll call him JJ, after another person important and dear to me.”

The Furling, Jahar, bowed once more, grinning like a loon. “I would be incredibly honored, Spencer Reid. Furalin.”

Å 

*~ When you're a little different than others, it takes a little more time to fit in. If you really want to be there, there are no ingredients you need other than effort, perseverance and teamwork. ~ Julie Payette*

Å

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for the wait, folks, but it takes time for me to write from a standing start. And, like most of my fics, this monster is getting way out of hand. I’ve gone from 4 to 5 ‘stages’, for one thing, splitting the Pegasus adventures section two-for-one. However, cutting where I did means this section is complete and ready to post. It’ll be coming up in chunks over the next week as I do final edits.


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